Jason Statham

Jason Statham was born on July 26, 1967, in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, England. Before acting, he trained as a diver and competed for England at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. His athletic background later became a conspicuous part of his screen persona, but his entry into films came through a different route. While working as a model and selling goods on the street, he caught the attention of director Guy Ritchie. Ritchie cast him as Bacon in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), a London crime comedy centered on a disastrous card game and an escalating tangle of debts.

Statham reunited with Ritchie for Snatch (2000), playing Turkish, a boxing promoter drawn into a scheme involving an unpredictable bare-knuckle fighter played by Brad Pitt. He gained an international action franchise with The Transporter (2002), portraying Frank Martin, a professional driver who follows strict rules when delivering packages. He returned for Transporter 2 (2005) and Transporter 3 (2008). In The Italian Job (2003), he played getaway driver Handsome Rob opposite Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron. Crank (2006) gave him the role of Chev Chelios, a hitman forced to keep his adrenaline elevated to survive poisoning; a sequel followed in 2009.

Other early starring roles included Jensen Ames in Death Race (2008), a film about prisoners competing in lethal televised car races, and Terry Leather in The Bank Job (2008), a thriller inspired by the 1971 Baker Street robbery. Beginning with The Expendables (2010), Statham played knife specialist Lee Christmas alongside Sylvester Stallone. He joined the Fast & Furious series as Deckard Shaw, the brother of Owen Shaw. After appearing in Furious 7 (2015), he shared top billing with Dwayne Johnson in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), whose plot pairs their rival characters against a cybernetically enhanced terrorist.

Statham also showed a comic side as overconfident agent Rick Ford in Paul Feig’s Spy (2015), opposite Melissa McCarthy. In The Meg (2018), he played rescue diver Jonas Taylor, who confronts a giant prehistoric shark; he reprised the part in Meg 2: The Trench (2023). His collaborations with Ritchie continued through Wrath of Man (2021), in which he played an armored-truck employee seeking revenge, and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023), where he portrayed spy Orson Fortune. In David Ayer’s The Beekeeper (2024), he starred as Adam Clay, a retired operative pursuing a phishing operation after his elderly neighbor’s death.