Jason Statham isn’t ashamed of his street-hawker past, said Ivan Solotaroff in Details. Growing up in a poor South London neighborhood, Statham was schooled by his father in the art of selling counterfeit jewelry. “We’d set up shop, mock auctions, the run-out,” says the action movie star. “These are all words and names describing the way people get ripped off.” The ersatz-goods trade paid well. “Man, we was doing 1,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds”—about $1,600 to $3,200—“selling s--- you’d buy for maybe 60 pence? That’s bunce, pure profit.” He doesn’t feel any pity for his old customers. “It’s people’s own greed that allows them to get ripped off. If your intuition served you at all, you’d never be in that shop,” he says. “And we never said, ‘That’s gold, that’s Cartier.’ We just never let them ask. If they insisted, you’d say, ‘I’ll get a price in a minute. My mother waited nine months for me. You can wait another minute, can’t you?’” Statham doesn’t see much difference between his old career and his new one in Hollywood. “So much of this industry is bulls---. But I did it for a living. I see it before it enters the room.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacyFeature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
