Crime does pay! Gangster movie boss Guy takes £13m from firm
HE’S blessed with a glamorous wife, not to mention a glorious Georgian manor house set in 1,134- acres on the Wiltshire-Dorset border, from where his own brewery supplies the beer for both his London pub and the restaurant at the vintage airfield he acquired last year.
But just when you thought that life couldn’t get much sweeter for Guy Ritchie, I can disclose that he’ll be tucking into his Easter eggs with a particularly satisfied smile — having trousered £13 million.
That’s the dividend Ritchie, 55, treated himself to in the last financial year, courtesy of Toff Guy Films, the company he established in 2004 when married to his first wife, Madonna.
At the time, cynics suggested his career would be a two-hit wonder, limited to his Bafta-winning debut, gangster movie Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, and its equally dazzling follow-up, Snatch.
His third film, Swept Away, starring Madonna, was released in 2002. It was a disaster — both critically and commercially. So was his fourth, Revolver, three years later, despite boasting Jason Statham in the lead role.
But friends felt there was only really one factor impeding Ritchie: an illstarred marriage. ‘I felt a film shoot would last longer than the marriage,’
recalls one of them, arguing that, while Ritchie remained with Madonna, he was reduced to a desperate, supporting role.
‘You can’t really be married to a superstar and produce your best. It never works.’
The pair divorced in 2008, the year he was hired to direct Sherlock Holmes — a huge Box Office success.
Next month, Ritchie, who in 2015 married model Jacqui Ainsley, celebrates the U.S. release of his latest film, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare — only weeks after the end of his acclaimed Netflix crime series, The Gentlemen.
Remind me, what’s Madonna up to these days?