Guy Ritchie - Biography

In a nutshell

Guy Ritchie was born on September 10, 1968 in Hatfield in Hertfordshire, the son of an advertising executive called John Ritchie.

He left school with one ? just ONE! ? GCE (you can tell it was a while ago, they missed the S out) but, luckily for fans of gun-shooting, masculine movies, his qualification was in film studies. Hooray!

It's never easy to enter your chosen career path straight away, though. After all, we were stuck cleaning toilets until TalkTalk asked us to profile your favourite celebs. And Richie was no different, spending time working on a building site until, for whatever reason (perhaps his outstanding GCE result) he was spurred into going to work as a runner in the 'movie industry'. We're still not sure what 'runners' actually DO, but it was a start.

Guy managed to get one of his short films broadcast by Channel 4 and this was the start of his road to the 'big time'.

His first major film (and possibly his only decent one) was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It got decent reviews, a few of you went to see it and so Guy continued to release a few films about guns and gangsters and stuff, with Snatch and Revolver two you might have heard of.

Although he's a director, most people know Guy because he's married to a little-known singer called Madonna. They met at a fabulous party held by Sting and his wife Trudy Styler and it wasn't long until they were married. In 2000 they had their first son who they named Rocco.

Perhaps mixing love with work wasn't the best idea, though ? Madonna starred in the film everybody loved to hate (hang on, lets just call it hated full-stop), Swept Away. It absolutely bombed at the box office and we all hoped Madonna learnt her lesson.

But we all know how it ended ? Guy and Madonna divorced in 2007.She's moved onto Jesus...

Guy will be hoping for a new hit film in 2010 - his adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law hit cinemas at the end of 2009.

Did you know?