Lock, Stock & Lampshades! I'm A Complicated Guy

The King Of Cool Takes On A Legend!

- George Greig

Guy Ritchie has an obsession with barbecues. He owns more than 30 of them, with one permanently in the boot of his car and five in his London house, which also boasts two clay ovens.

“I adore them,” he confesses with a laugh. “I’m a caveman in many ways – put me under the heading ‘Likes to cook raw steak on a barbecue.’”

But there’s a feminine side to the filmmaker too. “I’m very into my interiors and my textiles,” Guy, 48, admits soon afterwards. “I’m a bit of an old lady like that. I’ve got an entire office downstairs with cloths of different colours from canary to yolk yellow.”

Guy is the king of British gangster cool – he directed the very violent Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he has a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and his face is scarred by 50 stitches from street fights. But he also likes to talk paint swatches and lampshades.

And his new film, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, is set to cement his reputation as a bloke’s bloke. The bigbudget medieval epic, which stars action hero Charlie Hunnam in the lead role, is full of stinging one-liners and eye-watering combat scenes.

His Arthur is a scoundrel with a heart of gold, who shows a healthy disdain for the ruling class as he rises to the top. It’s a journey not unlike Guy’s own ascent – from dyslexic school drop-out to one of the most powerful directors in Hollywood.

In between, he’s been a sewer worker, an antiques delivery man and a film runner – the latter eventually leading to his career in movies. “There was no obvious path,” he tells. “I fell into the kind of murky world of the uneducated middle class.”