One of the hardest of the “hard men” of UK football, Vinnie Jones parlayed his flinty sports image into a successful second career as an actor on both sides of the Atlantic. Born Vincent Peter Jones in Watford, England on Jan. 5, 1965, Jones began his football career with the semi-professional Wealdstone Football Club (or F.C.) before joining the Wimbledon F.C. in 1986. Jones quickly earned a reputation as a tough player – he held the still-unbroken record of the fastest receipt of a yellow card (a citation of a second warning in a single match, which warrants removal from the game), which he accomplished within the first three seconds of a game, and was notoriously photographed distracting another player by grabbing his testicles, among other offenses. Despite such questionable actions, he also helped Wimbledon win the Football Association Challenge Cup (English football’s greatest honor) in 1988. Jones went on to play for several other leagues before returning to Wimbledon in 1992. That same year, he doubled his previous notoriety by hosting a video compilation called “Soccer’s Hard Men,” which offered up footage of him and other footballers engaging in rough gameplay. The video earned Jones a fine of 20,000 pounds from the Football Association – and further cemented his outlaw celebrity status. Despite his rough-and-tumble persona, Jones was enough of an accomplished player, with 384 games and 33 goals to his name, that he was chosen to captain the Wales International soccer team in 1994. He closed his professional sports career in 1998 by serving as player/coach of the Queens Park Rangers before retiring the following year. Jones’ celebrity status and rough-hewn charisma seemed a natural transition to the entertainment biz, starting in 1999 with television commercials and moving quickly to feature films – most importantly, Guy Ritchie’s crime comedy, “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” (1999). Jones’ character, Big Chris, was not too far from his actual persona – the leg breaker – but the character’s personality quirks (his son accompanies him on “jobs,” and a hapless victim is verbally reprimanded for swearing in front of the boy) and Jones’ stony visage made the role one of the most memorable elements of the film. For his performance, Jones won his first of two Empire Awards – the second, for Ritchie’s “Snatch” in 2001. Jones’ subsequent performances were essentially cut from the same cloth as Big Chris – menacing, physical men with an occasional wrinkle of humor in their make-up. He was a tough, implacable hood in the remake of “Gone in Sixty Seconds” (2000), “Swordfish” (2001), and “The Big Bounce” (2004), while “Tooth” and “EuroTrip” (both 2004) allow him to flex a little comic muscle as a malevolent fairytale figure and a hotwired soccer hooligan, respectively. “Mean Machine” (2001), an English football revision of “The Longest Yard” (1974), and the thriller “Johnny Was” (2004) offered Jones a rare opportunity to topline a film, but for the most part, Jones was well ensconced in the villain/cop/crook-on-the-lam roles. He also continued to appear in UK television commercials, most notably in a self-parodying series for Bacardi that ran from 2001-03, until Jones was banned from Virgin Airlines for brawling with crew members in a much-publicized incident. In 2006, Jones was tapped to play the malevolent mutant, Juggernaut, in “X-Men: The Last Stand,” and reportedly signed to continue the role in subsequent franchise titles. He also inked the deal for several upcoming international projects, including “The Condemned,” which would pit him against another ex-athlete turned actor, wrestling superstar “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.