In Hollywood we tend to see actors and actresses take on similar roles again and again. Once somebody shows a particular aptitude for a certain type of character, they get offered that again. If an actor has a successful action movie, get ready to see them in a slew of action roles playing similar characters. For Jason Statham, that means not only being an action hero (or villain) but also playing characters who are quite intense. You see it often enough that it's easy to believe that the reason he's so good at those roles is because that's who the actor is in real life, but that's apparently not the case, which was just as much of a surprise to his wife, actress and model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
Speaking with Elle, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley explains that, after meeting Jason Statham the first time, the thing she was most taken with was the fact that he was both more humble, and more fun, then she was expecting him to be. The actress explains...
The fact that you just brought that up made me remember the first evening I ever met him and spent time with him. I remember calling my friend the next day and just being like, 'Wow, he’s so unexpectedly not who I thought he’d be. He’s so grounded and humble, he’s really fun and charismatic and energetic.' Those were all things I just wasn’t expecting about him and what drew me to him.
While Jason Statham has certainly had some film roles where he gets to be more "fun" than others, even when he appears in comedies, he's usually the straight man. He certainly has a natural charisma on screen, but it sounds like it's something different than the real man. It makes one want to see this side of the actor on screen. We've certainly seen the man has a sense of humor, but he rarely gets to really revel in that in his roles.
Jason Statham could have acted like the fairly big Hollywood star that he is, or been the more straight faced person that he often portrays on screen, but he's apparently neither of those things. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley says that she thinks part of the reason for that is that Statham didn't become an actor until after several years of leading a much more "normal" life, and thus he has a more grounded perspective on fame, work and the rest of it. Huntington-Whiteley continues...
He knows the value of a pound. And he understands what hard work gets you… He didn’t act until he was well into his thirties, so he had this big chunk of life where he was a painter and decorator and he was on the door of clubs and he was on the market stall, trading… So he’s got that real groundedness and I love the fact he will pass that on to our child as well.
Being the child of a couple of actors, the son that the two share will certainly grow up very differently than his father, but his mother certainly expects dad to pass on those traits that she finds important about him.
