(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 1 February 2026 9:00, UK
If, like me, you grew up in grim old late 1980s UK, then you will have fond, or rather not so fond, memories of Vinnie Jones rampaging around rundown football grounds kicking people, snarling a lot and being generally unpleasant. You certainly wouldn’t have had him pinned as a future movie star.
Jones was an anti-footballer, a grabber of Gazza’s balls, a no-nonsense midfielder who nobody particularly liked and on occasion, as with his tackle on Gary Stevens in 1988, whose aggression would tip over into the kind of challenge that ended someone’s career early. So, although he wasn’t someone you’d expect to see up on the silver screen, perhaps he was an ideal choice for Guy Ritchie when he wanted to find a nasty gangland enforcer for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
The 1998 film was everywhere on release, everyone was quoting it, and Ritchie’s directorial style proved massively influential, not least on the next few films he made himself. Jones had a role that basically involved grunting and slamming car doors on people’s heads, which probably didn’t test him overtly, but it was enough to catch the attention of Hollywood agents nonetheless.
‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ was the mantra that those agents followed with regard to Jones, and so he was duly lined up to feature as several almost wordless tough guys once he made the trip over the pond, appearing in resolutely early 2000s techno-action fare like Gone in Sixty Seconds and Swordfish, which may as well be the same film quite honestly, Jones appearing in the background of both in some kind of long leather jacket and cracking his knuckles.
After a couple of prison and/or football-related films, Jones took on the movie that most fans in the US would probably know him from, given that it was a major instalment of a global superhero franchise. X-Men: The Last Stand was the 2006 sequel that served as the third movie in the Marvel series, starring a collection of names including Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen and Ian McKellen, and at the time it was the most expensive film ever made.
Jones was cast as the metal-headed mutant criminal Juggernaut, all muscles and armour, and he was brought in by then-director Matthew Vaughn, whom he had met on the set of Guy Ritchie’s movies. But Jones’ experience of a mega-budget movie was anything but smooth sailing, with the hardman describing it as a shambles after Vaughn left the project.
He said, “The new director came on, and it was not the same role as I had signed on to do; they diluted it, the dialogue. It was a bigger role… the director brought in so many other moving parts and so many other actors that mine was the one that got diluted.”
Adding, “I lost all interest quite early because I knew they were just ticking me along, you know what I mean? I was very upset, really, because it was such a movie, such a big stage and [I] became an extra, that’s what happened.”
X-Men: The Last Stand would go on to be a big hit despite the spend, bringing in $460million at the box office. But it was Jones’ last stab at a really big film, although he has somehow managed to stretch his career out some 20 years, making dozens of low-budget violent films and lining up alongside giants including Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2013’s Escape Plan.
Related Topics