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Ritchie, like the woman he calls "the missus," doesn't always play by the rules. At 15 he left school, then eschewed his upper-middle class for a life of globe trotting and barhopping. Along the way he acquired the long knife scar on his left cheek. Last summer he got into a scrape with a male fan because "our house got sieged," he says. "One day I couldn't even drive my car out of the house, so I got out and kicked someone. We haven't had a fan since."
No wonder he's writing a film based on the Great Siege of Malta, a 16th century battle waged by the Ottoman ruler Suleiman against Christian knights. "It's not biased to Muslims or Christians," says Ritchie. "It's just one of those against-the-odds stories." This serious, epic ambition may also indicate that marriage is maturing him a bit. "She's introduced me to spirituality, and I've introduced her to science," says Ritchie. "I don't think either is to be ignored."
Ritchie won't be ignored either. After he came up with the title Snatch, Columbia TriStar wavered. "We did very seriously debate changing it to Snatched for fear of the vulgarity," says vice chairman Gareth Wigan. But Ritchie put up his dukes and won his title back. Now that the film has already been a success overseas (and you must admit the idea of hearing Mary Hart say Snatch is pretty delicious), the suits have come around. "I was wrong," admits Wigan. "The vulgar connotation hasn't even surfaced." Careful. No one thought Sean Penn would surface either.