Guy Ritchie on 'Snatch,' 'Sherlock Holmes' and Why He Still Likes 'Swept Away'
Guy Ritchie returns to the action on Friday in well-tailored style with his ‘60s-set spy caper The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It was a perfect opportunity, then, for us to sit down with the British director and look back on his prolific career, including his ill-fated 2002 drama Swept Away, starring then-wife Madonna. (Watch the video above.)
“I got myself in a lot of hot water by making Swept Away,” said Ritchie, laughing at how he had to be “peeled off the floor” between that bomb and his next flop, 2005′s Revolver. Still Ritchie maintains, “I like Swept Away…. I look at it as a healthy ingredient to the stew of becoming a filmmaker.”
In happier memories, Ritchie’s first film, the 1998 crime flick Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, is still one of his more well-regarded efforts. It launched his career, in large part thanks to one of its supporting players: Sting.
“Trudie [Styler], Sting’s missus, was the first person to part with money to make Lock, Stock happen,” Ritchie said. “Sting and Trudie, they really had a lot to do with me having a career. So in turn, I said, ‘Could you be in it?’”
Both Sting and Styler appeared in the film, and as Ritchie recalled, they were by far the biggest draws at the time. But the movie also launched a future superstar, a then-anonymous street peddler named Jason Statham.
“When I first met him, he was selling perfume on the street,” Ritchie said. “The opening pitch that he does in Lock, Stock is what Jason did.”
Ritchie re-teamed with Statham for 2000′s Snatch, which also starred Brad Pitt, who did his best impression of an Irish Traveller for the film. According to Ritchie, Sony, the film’s distributor, was absolutely horrified by the fact that Pitt was basically incomprehensible. Luckily, the movie would soon become a cult hit.
After the double dose of Swept Away and Revolver, Ritchie found redemption with his blockbuster version of Sherlock Holmes in 2009 starring Robert Downey Jr. For all that movie’s high-octane action though, Ritchie said he was most concerned with Downey’s rendition of the Queen’s English. “There’s not many American actors that can do a flawless English accent,” he said, remembering how relieved he was when he first heard Downey’s perfect pronunciation. “From there, my job was done really.”
