Travelling down in the lift with two members of this newspaper's sports department, I mention I'm on my way to interview footballing hard-man turned movie-star Vinnie Jones. They're amused at Jones's new career and persona, but I'm warned: "He's fine, but don't expect to be intellectually challenged" - advice which, while seeming to rule out any nose-biting incidents, simultaneously goes to show how much sports journalists know about the intelligence-level of the average movie star. Actually, as football becomes increasingly media-saturated, sportsmen are becoming more like actors, increasingly adept at dealing with the press and television, groomed and polished by handlers and experts - just look at the reinvention of Roy Keane over the past year.
Vinnie Jones has been one of the more astute exploiters of this trend, parlaying a moderate footballing talent and a reputation for violence on and off the pitch into a "bad boy" image that chimes well with the laddish times and has made him a bigger star than his skills might otherwise warrant. It was only a matter of time, really, before some hip, young film-maker cast him in a movie, which is what writer-director Guy Ritchie has done in his Cockney gangland comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Already a big hit in the UK, Lock, Stock stars Jones as Big Chris, a debt collector who doesn't take no for an answer. Jones is very funny in the role, and he knows it, telling me with some pride that he was the first person cast.
"In the description of each character, Guy put in who he wanted each one to be like, and for Big Chris, he'd written `like Vinnie Jones the footballer'. The producer said: `Well, I saw him on the telly the other day and he looks really cool, so let's get in touch with him.' I'd been offered two films beforehand, and what I really didn't have time for was a cameo role in a film. They assured me it was one of the main characters, so I jumped at that."
This business of playing a proper, substantial part seems to be important to him. Elizabeth, another film released this week, features former Manchester United hero Eric Cantona, but when I mention the coincidence, he is dismissive. "He's got a cameo role. I've seen the film and he's hardly in it, which is just what I didn't want to do."
But Cantona has also had roles in a couple of French films over the past year, I unwisely point out. Jones chortles. "I like Eric a lot, he's a very cool dude, but who wants to be in a French movie? I'd rather be in a Lassie movie."
So, does Jones regard himself as a film fan?
"I like going to the movies, but it's hard for me to get to them a lot of the time. I'm a big fan of Sky Movies, and videos. I like Tarantino films and Mafia films, Scarface, all that sort of stuff, but I'm very broadminded, really. I loved The English Patient, Last of the Mohicans, Braveheart." He does seem to genuinely admire and like Ritchie and the rest of the film-making team, some of whom have accompanied him on this trip to Dublin. "I was talking to Guy on the plane coming over today and he was saying he'd been lucky. Because it was such a lowbudget film, he could do things his own way. He didn't have people saying he couldn't do this or that. So it's all him. Because there was a lot of lads on the film, we had a good laugh and had a lot of fun. We really became a team - that was the part I liked most about it."
In a way, he agrees, making a low-budget film is a bit like running an underdog club such as his own former team, Wimbledon. "Joe Kinnear was the equivalent of the film director at Wimbledon, and I was Big Chris, the enforcer. There's no fat cats there. Joe's a very good leveller. If you think you're a superstar, go to Wimbledon, and Joe will bring you down to earth. The thing I would worry about Wimbledon would be if they start handing out 10 grand a week salaries like the rest of them. That could destroy the whole thing."
Now in the twilight of his own footballing career with Queens Park Rangers, he didn't feel any pressure in his first acting job. "I had nothing to lose. I didn't need it to pay the mortgage. I did it for the enjoyment, and I think that shows in my acting. In football, it's your life, and you've got to play well every week to get in the team the following week. I have a computer firm that's doing very well, so I don't need to make money. I could be like Steve Collins," (who also has a small part in Lock, Stock, playing a bouncer). "I was up at his house today, and all he does is ride his horse and muck out the stables. Goes down the gym, has a spar, goes for a drink . . . I'm like Steve in a lot of ways. He's grafted his socks off to get where he has, and now he's saying hold on a minute, he just wants to relax for a few years."
What he likes most about the film, he says, is its humour. "I'm quite a funny fellow myself, with the one-liners and all, so this is right up my street. If you went into the pub that I drink in, there's all that sort of humour, and Guy brings that out brilliantly. It's witty stuff, so when the bloke says: `I f***ing hate traffic wardens', they all think about it and then jump him, and you can feel the whole audience wanting to get in the back of that van and beat that traffic warden up."
Er, yes . . . but that particular scene is one of the points, I suggest, where Lock, Stock oversteps the mark, going for a cheap, nasty shot that plays on the worst, most laddish instincts of its audience. I'm aware I'm not going to get much joy from the question, but I have to ask him what he thinks of criticisms of violent movies. The response is much as expected. "Well, if anyone doesn't like it, they can go and watch Bambi. If people thought so badly of it, why has it taken £12 million at the box office? Anyway, you don't really see me do a lot of that stuff in the film, even though I'm playing the big enforcer and all that. I was thinking that, reading the script, wondering when do I get to bash someone up? Even when I do it, it's the character who Guy has built up as the most hated bloke in the film, so it's good that I do him."
To be fair, apart from these two sequences Ritchie is imaginative enough to have most of his violence take place off-camera, and his film is genuinely witty and stylish most of the time. One of its strengths lies in the way it draws on London mannerisms and slang for its style, Jones agrees.
"But that's where Guy's from, so he's doing what he knows. You could have set it in Manchester or Birmingham or Liverpool. You could definitely have done it in Glasgow, but it's already been done up in Scotland with Trainspotting. There were scenes in that film I thought were a bit strong, but I didn't think there was any of that in our film."
He's already agreed to do another movie with Ritchie early next year, but he treats my question as to whether we'll be seeing him in any Jane Austen adaptations with the contempt it probably deserves. "My old man told me that it's very hard earning money at what you know, but it's f***ing harder earning money at something you don't know. You've got to know your limitations in life. My partner in the computer firm is an absolute whizz kid, earning us fortunes. But if you put him in as manager of QPR, he wouldn't have a clue."
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels went on general release yesterday.