Guy Ritchie

Ritchie, who launched the career of Jason Statham in films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, says he sees the same confidence in McGregor that he spotted in Statham — now one of Hollywood’s top action stars.

Like Jason Statham, [McGregor] is an athlete, completely on his game all the time, look where he’s at now. And you can see that similarity in Conor, he could clean up in Hollywood.

Ritchie, who is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Renzo Gracie, says he tried to persuade McGregor to take a part in King Arthur, though McGregor declined due to training commitments.

We even went after him for a part in the movie but he wasn’t having any of it. Was training for a fight at the time, couldn’t take his attention away from that. But you can see in his presence, in his demeanour, he’s got that swagger, that real appealing cockiness. It’s an unmistakable spark…Preparing for the action scenes, we watched a lot of McGregor fight footage because his style was what we were after. That very intense, singular, lightning fast, juggernaut trademark technique was perfect and we modeled Arthur’s physicality on that.