Matthew Vaughn

Last updated

Matthew Vaughn
Matthew Vaughn (48017198166) CROPPED.jpg
Vaughn in 2019
Born
Matthew Allard Robert Vaughn

(1971-03-07) 7 March 1971 (age 53)
Paddington, London, England
Occupations
  • Film director
  • film producer
  • screenwriter
Years active1996–present
Spouse
(m. 2002)
Children3

Matthew Allard de Vere Drummond (born Matthew Allard Robert Vaughn; 7 March 1971), known professionally as Matthew Vaughn, is an English filmmaker. [1] He has produced films including Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000), and directed Layer Cake (2004), Stardust (2007), Kick-Ass (2010), X-Men: First Class (2011), and Argylle (2024). Vaughn also co-created the Kingsman comic book series and resulting franchise, directing, producing and co-writing the films Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), and The King's Man (2021).

Contents

Early life

Vaughn was born in Paddington, London, England. [2] [3] Until 2002, he had thought that he was the child of a relationship between his mother, Kathy Ceaton (died 20 July 2013), and American actor Robert Vaughn. [4] A paternity investigation [3] in the 1980s revealed that Robert Vaughn was not his father, but Ceaton had never revealed otherwise to Vaughn. Upon asking his mother about his true paternity, she revealed that his father was George Albert Harley de Vere Drummond, [4] [5] an English banker. Early in Vaughn's life, before the paternity investigation, Robert Vaughn had asked for the child's surname to be Vaughn, and it continues as Vaughn's professional name, though he uses de Vere Drummond in his personal life, [4] having changed it by deed poll in May 2002. [6]

Vaughn was educated at Sussex House School in London and then Stowe School in Buckingham. Taking a gap year between Stowe and university, he travelled around the world on a Hard Rock Cafe tour. After arriving in Los Angeles he began working as an assistant to a film director. He later returned to London, and attended University College London studying anthropology and ancient history. He dropped out after a few weeks.

Career

Aged 25, Vaughn produced a low-budget thriller, The Innocent Sleep (1996), starring Annabella Sciorra and Michael Gambon. [7] He continued as a producer on close friend Guy Ritchie's film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels . The film was a critical, popular and financial success, earning Vaughn and Ritchie £9 million each. Vaughn would later produce Ritchie's Snatch and Swept Away .

Vaughn made his directorial debut in 2004 with Layer Cake . The film was well received and its success led to Vaughn being tapped to direct X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), but he dropped out only two weeks before filming began. Subsequently, he said the film was "pretty good" given the limited time they had to make it, [8] but he was critical of Brett Ratner's direction of the film. [9] For his next project he co-wrote and directed Stardust , followed by a movie adaptation of Mark Millar's Kick-Ass in 2010. Vaughn directed and co-wrote the first film in the prequel trilogy of the X-Men film universe titled, X-Men: First Class (2011). [10] Vaughn was signed to return to the series as director of the sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), but dropped out in favour of Bryan Singer who had directed the first two films in the original trilogy, X-Men and X2: X-Men United . Vaughn remained attached to the film by co-writing the script. [11]

Vaughn's next directorial project, was Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), an adaptation of the comic book The Secret Service created by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons from a concept by Millar and an initially uncredited Vaughn himself (Vaughn being credited as the comic's co-creator on all republications since 2014). [12] The film was scripted by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, and produced by Vaughn's production company Marv Films. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] Vaughn returned to direct, produce, and co-write the Kingsman sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle , which was released in theaters in September 2017. Vaughn also directed and provided the story for The King's Man , the third installment in the franchise serving as a prequel to the original film. Delayed from November 2019 due to both the schedule shuffle following Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic, the film was released on 22 December 2021.

In March 2017, Collider reported that Vaughn was top choice to direct Man of Steel 2 ; [19] in September of that year, Vaughn confirmed that he was in negotiations with the studio to helm the project. [20] By March 2019, Vaughn stated that discussions with Warner Bros. had ended, and he was no longer involved with development of the film. [21]

Vaughn began working on spy film Argylle in 2021, an original story written by Jason Fuchs and starring an ensemble cast including Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Bryan Cranston and John Cena. [22] The film premiered in January 2024, and was released by Universal Pictures and Apple Original Films. [23]

In January 2024, Vaughn announced that he would be producing a third Kick-Ass film, titled Stuntnuts Does School Fight , directed by his longtime stunt coordinator Damien Walters in his feature film debut, which had secretly already been greenlit and had completed filming. [24] also announcing two further films in the Hit-Girl & Kick-Ass franchise to be in development, to be produced by him as a trilogy, under the working titles Vram and Kick-Ass. [24]

Personal life

On 25 May 2002, Vaughn married German supermodel Claudia Schiffer in Suffolk. [25] The couple have a son and two daughters, the youngest born in 2010. [26] [27] They have homes in Notting Hill, London, Northamptonshire and Coldham Hall, Stanningfield, Suffolk. [28]

Filmography

Film

YearTitle Director Producer Writer
2004 Layer Cake YesYesNo
2007 Stardust YesYesYes
2010 Kick-Ass YesYesYes
The Debt NoYesYes
2011 X-Men: First Class YesNoYes
2014 X-Men: Days of Future Past NoYesStory
Kingsman: The Secret Service YesYesYes
2017 Kingsman: The Golden Circle YesYesYes
2021 The King's Man YesYesYes
2024 Argylle YesYesNo

Producer only

Television

Executive producer

Video game

Producer

Frequent collaborators

Actors and actresses
Work
Actor
Layer Cake
Randall Batinkoff Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Geoff Bell Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Sofia Boutella Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Henry Cavill Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Sophie Cookson Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Taron Egerton Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Colin Firth Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Jason Flemyng Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Dexter Fletcher Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Michael Gambon Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Tamer Hassan Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Edward Holcroft Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Samuel L. Jackson Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Aaron Taylor-Johnson Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Corey Johnson Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Sienna Miller Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Sam Rockwell Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Mark Strong Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Samantha Womack Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Film crew
Work
Crew
Adam Bohling Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Ben Davis Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Jane Goldman Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Eddie Hamilton Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Jon Harris Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Henry Jackman Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Matthew Margeson Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
George Richmond Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg
Lee Smith Yes check.svgYes check.svg
Take That Yes check.svgYes check.svgYes check.svg

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References

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  2. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 30 December 2021.
  3. 1 2 "Vaughn's truth about son Matthew". Evening Standard. 25 April 2002. Retrieved 17 March 2019.
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  5. "CLAUDIA GETS A 'C' ON HER LABOR DAY". New York Daily News .
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  12. {{Cite web|last=Phegley|first=Kiel|url=http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=36345%7Ctitle=Millarworld Exclusive: Inside "The Secret Service"|date=10 January 2012|access-date=12 January 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112025205/http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=36345%7Carchive-date=12 January 2012|website=Comic Book Resources|url-status=dead|quote= Mark Millar: "This education of a 21st Century super-spy forms the structure of the story. I can't give too much away because Matthew Vaughn and I co-conceived the thing with [[Dave Gibbons|Dave [Gibbons]]], and Vaughn is literally right now writing the screenplay of the movie, so we're on a non-disclosure agreement for a little while yet. But basically, if I had to say anything else about it, I would say that this is our version of S.H.I.E.L.D. or U.N.C.L.E. or any of those brilliant super-spy concepts, but seen through that skewed perspective we brought to superheroes in ' Kick-Ass .' It feels very, very fresh. I don't think there's ever been a comic like this and all three of us are very excited about it. I've wanted to work with Dave since I was sixteen [so] it had to be something big."}}
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