Vinnie Jones

 ( 1965 Births ) 

Jones' international call-up was however greeted with consternation by some and was even ridiculed by Jimmy Greaves, who said, "Well, stone me! We've had cocaine, bribery and Arsenal scoring two goals at home. But just when you thought there were truly no surprises left in football, Vinnie Jones turns out to be an international player!".

He holds the record for the quickest ever booking in a football match, being booked after just five seconds for a foul on the opposition player Dane Whitehouse, in an FA Cup tie between Chelsea and Sheffield United in 1992. In his autobiography, he recalls: "I must have been too high, too wild, too strong or too early, because, after three seconds, I could hardly have been too bloody late!"

In an incident in February 1988, Jones was famously photographed covertly grabbing Paul Gascoigne by his during a league game for Wimbledon against Newcastle United.

In 2020, Jones appeared on the ITV show Harry's Heroes, It featured former football manager Harry Redknapp attempting get a squad of former England international footballers back fit and healthy for one last game, vs a Germany Legends team. Despite playing for Wales during his professional career, Jones briefly took part in Season Two and played for the England legends in one of their warm up games against San Marino veterans.

He has since been typecast in similar roles as criminals or villains, including the dapper gun-for-hire "Bullet-Tooth Tony" in Guy Ritchie's 2000 follow up Snatch, for which Jones won the Best British Actor at the 6th Empire Awards in 2001. Jones became known to American audiences in the 2000 film remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, in which he played Sphinx. Although this was a major role with significant screen time, he only had one line of dialogue because his character was a silent, tough brawler. He teamed up with director Dominic Sena again the following year for the thriller Swordfish, in which he played one of John Travolta's henchmen.

Jones played Danny Meehan in Mean Machine, a 2001 British remake of the Burt Reynolds film The Longest Yard. He played a former captain of the England national football team, who is sent to prison and subsequently takes control of a team of inmates who play against the prison guards' team. In the 2004 Japanese film Survive Style 5+, he played a hitman from Britain. He played another football role as Mad Maynard, the leader of a Manchester United football hooligan firm, in the 2004 film EuroTrip. His next role was in the 2006 film, , as the comic book villain Juggernaut, alongside Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. He said that he would like to play Juggernaut in a spin-off. One of his lines in the film ("I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!") was based on a pre-existing Internet parody. The same year, he was featured in another football film, She's the Man, as the coach of the Illyria team. In 2007, he played McStarley in The Condemned, a film about death row inmates forced to fight to the death on a remote island.

Jones was a housemate on the reality television show Celebrity Big Brother 7 in 2010, and celebrated his 45th birthday while he participated. He received loud cheers as he entered the house and was the favourite to win going into the house, but he did not maintain popularity with the public; the crowd chanted "get Vinnie out" on the final night and booed him as he left the house after he finished in third place. Speaking of his experience on the show, he said: "It was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in there – and I was Jack Nicholson."

Jones played a professional killer in the Kazakhstani film Liquidator in 2011. His character is an elite assassin invited to eliminate the main character. Producers of the film dealt with the Kazakh-to-English language barrier by writing Jones' character as a mute who does not speak. In the same year, he played Zed in the movie Blood Out. He played a role in the Hungarian film The Magic Boys in 2012. That same year, he voiced Freddie the Dog in . He co-starred alongside Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action-thriller Escape Plan, released in 2013, and was featured with Danny Trejo in the 2014 horror-thriller Reaper.

In 2021, Jones competed in the third season of the Australian version of The Masked Singer as "Volcano". He was the first contestant eliminated.

Having met Tanya Terry when they were both 12 years old and next-door neighbours in Watford, Jones later married her in 1994. Tanya had a daughter by her first husband, footballer Steve Terry. Jones has a son, Aaron Elliston-Jones, with his ex-girlfriend Mylene Elliston. Aaron was born in 1991.

In November 2013, Jones received treatment after finding signs of skin cancer below his eye. This was a removal procedure as a precaution. Many years prior his wife was also diagnosed with skin cancer, which then Brain metastasis by 2018. Jones and their daughter Kaley were with at her bedside during her death from cancer on 6 July 2019. He discussed her death during an appearance on Piers Morgan's Life Stories in September 2020, and said that he does not plan to remarry.

Jones penned an autobiography called Vinnie: The Autobiography,