The secret life of Jason Statham
The Hummingbird star laughs like an oversexed goose and happily spills the beans on his private life, whatever the protestations of his publicity people
Jason Statham. Photograph: James Dimmock/Corbis
I've bought Jason Statham a present. It's an unofficial 2013 Jason Statham calendar. It's hideous: cheaply made and impossible to annotate, with each month containing a different but equally dreadful paparazzi close-up of his own giant head. And I don't realise what a stupid present it is until it's halfway out of my bag.
I mean, this is Jason Statham. You don't mess with Jason Statham. For more than a decade, a consistent theme has run through the man's work: You Don't Mess With Jason Statham. Jason Statham doesn't do fun. You've never seen him laugh. You've barely seen him smile. What you have seen, however, is Jason Statham punching people in the face. Or kicking them in the face. Or shooting them in the face. Or all three at once, during a car chase where everything's on fire. This calendar was a mistake. I start to worry about how my face will end up.
But then something weird happens. As soon as he sees what I'm doing, Jason Statham shrieks. He actually shrieks, so loudly that I recoil. This is apparently how Jason Statham laughs. It's a giddy, high-pitched, strangulated thing that comes out of nowhere and tears a vacuum in the atmosphere. It's the sort of noise a goose might make if caught in the throes of autoerotic asphyxiation. There's a good reason why Jason Statham doesn't laugh much in his films: his laugh is the single least Statham-ish noise that exists on the entire face of this planet.
"What's that?!" he squeals as he yanks the calendar out of my hands.
"Where did you get this? That's the worst fucking picture of me I've ever seen. Who's making money off that? Seven ninety fucking nine? Fuck! I should try and claim back the nine pence!"
I'd got Jason Statham wrong. Maybe we all had. Far from being the taciturn meathead that his films generally make him out to be, he barely lets up for the 45 minutes I spend with him. He laughs, he reminisces, he flings himself about on the sofa. At one point, he rolls out a dead-on impression of Steptoe's Harry H Corbett. Jason Statham's primary off-screen mode, it would appear, is "chatty".
We're here to talk about his new film, Hummingbird, the story of a homeless alcoholic who uses a rare stroke of good luck to clean up the crime-ridden streets of London. Despite its relatively small scale, and the fact that Statham is almost unrecognisable as a down-and-out (to start with, at least), it's absolutely a Jason Statham film, full of grit and action and absurd mid-fight one-liners ("You've got a knife, I've got a spoon" in particular looks set to become a classic). But given that it's also the directorial debut of Eastern Promises screenwriter Steven Knight, the film gives Statham a chance to flex his dramatic chops in a way that he's deliberately avoided since Guy Ritchie's disastrous Revolver in 2005. And it's undeniably clear that Statham is proud of the results.
"This is one of the most rewarding experiences that I've had," he enthuses. "Most of the scripts that land on my desk are stuff you read and go, 'Is someone really gonna make this?' It's been a revelation. It's fabulous to have something that fits me in so many ways. There's not another one of those coming next month."
If there's a sense that Hummingbird has opened Statham's eyes up to new possibilities, it's backed up by the language he uses to describe some of his older films. He's fond of a good food metaphor, and often compares his work to hamburgers. He'd like to make more dramatic films, he says, but is reluctant because he knows what sells.
"You can't have a sushi restaurant and then put cheese on toast on the menu, because they'd go 'Why did you do that? We came here to eat sushi.' The dilemma is that you have to do something that people want to see. So if you've got a story about a depressed doctor whose estranged wife doesn't wanna be with him no more, and you put me in it, people aren't gonna put money on the table. Whereas if you go, 'All he does is get in the car, hit someone on the head, shoot someone in the fucking feet,' then, yep, they'll give you $20m. You can't fault these people for wanting to make money. It's showbusiness. Ugh, I hate that word."
In an age when the public demands more and more access to the inner lives of its stars, Statham is refreshingly old-school. He rarely does press, and certainly not in the usual self-serving fashion. He doesn't have a mystique-destroying Twitter account. In the days before meeting him, his people bombard me with calls and emails reminding me that under no circumstance should I ask him about anything even remotely private.
Nobody knows anything about you, I suggest. What's the essence of Statham?
"Haaa!" he shrieks back. "The essence? Really?"
And with that, he's off. Over the course of the next 10 minutes, Jason Statham reels off his uninterrupted life story. Initially, according to this version of events at least, Statham originally wanted to be a movie stuntman.
Hummingbird. Photograph: Dan Smith
"I wanted to throw myself off a fucking cliff and parachute away like The Spy Who Loved Me," he recalls. "I remember being on holiday in Florida and seeing a chap do a high dive in the hotel pool at noon every day. He'd done this sort of reverse layout and I was like, 'Fuck! I'd love to do that!'"
So he did, becoming the world's 12th-best diver in the process. However, he retired before he could represent the UK at the Olympics. "I thought, 'Fuck it, I've got to waste another four years training? You know what? Nah.'" Soon afterwards, with his options severely narrowed, Statham found himself hawking dodgy jewellery on the streets of London. This is the bit where a young director called Guy Richie spotted him and gave him a part in his debut feature Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
"It was just one of those chance things," he says. "I stopped diving, sat down, didn't do much for a while, and then I got a part in a film. I was like, 'Fucking how the hell did this happen?'"
It all sounds remarkably fortuitous. "You don't usually meet directors on the streets," he agrees. "They don't come and stand in the crowd and go, 'Oh, thanks for the fucking 10-quid bag of shite, would you mind being in my film?'"
Statham's chummy geniality is so disarming that towards the end of the interview I forget who I'm talking to and off-handedly challenge him to an arm wrestle. "Nah, you don't want an arm wrestle," he suggests, amicably at first. "Actually, I don't want an arm wrestle. You know why I don't want a fucking arm wrestle? Because I've never lost, and if you beat me I'd be very upset."
Jason Statham's voice drops. He narrows his eyes. He glowers the same glower that we've seen on the movie posters and growls his final word on the subject: "You don't want an arm wrestle."
I take the hint. Shriek or no shriek, this is still Jason Statham. I'm not stupid.
Hummingbird opens on Fri 28 Jun in the UK and US
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