Jason Statham has been described as “the last action hero”. Action heroes, after all, belong to another era, when Bruces Lee and Willis were chopping people up, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was an actor, not a governor. It was an era before computer-generated imagery, exciting because it was real. Now very few actors do their own film stunts. They dabble, they play at it. Not Jason Statham. He does all his own stunts. He used to dive for Great Britain, competing in the Seoul Olympics and the Commonwealth Games.

Guy Ritchie discovered Statham selling fake perfumes on a faux fly-pitch market stall. He’d set up in the middle of Wembley market with two suitcases full of mock Cartier watches or pretend scent, in order to look as if he was selling illegally, though he’d paid for the spot, preferring it to a regular stall. With no acting experience, his charisma simmered in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s been a slow climb, though. For a while Statham was better known as Kelly Brook’s boyfriend, something that would make him wince. Since they broke up in 2005 he’s been able to focus on being the hero.

In Death Race, out now, he leaves you with a tight chest through the whole film. The director Paul W S Anderson’s £100m remake of Death Race 2000 is the enactment of a snuff movie. Prison inmates race for their freedom. They win or they die. Statham has been set up, wrongly accused, so that the prison governor can use his driving skills. Yes, he does all the driving. He’s reliving the excitement of the Bond movies he grew up on, the ultimate car chase.

You can’t take your eyes off Statham. It’s an intense and internal performance that works well with the hyper-speed action. And you can’t take your eyes off his body either. His torso is a work of art. Every muscle group is defined in a way you never thought they could be on a human body. He is the first British action hero now living in LA. We tried to do the interview there, at his home – Danish-rosewood floors and Philippe Starck coffee tables – but as befits his new stratosphere status, he was always in demand elsewhere, including being several times on a beach resort in Mexico, scuba-diving.

We meet instead in London, a grey, rainy day. But he’s pleased to be back among his friends. He had been with Guy Ritchie the day before. He’s in a grey, thin-knit sweater and jeans. Success has given him something extra, a slit-eyed presence. He’s no longer in somebody’s shadow. He fills the room. I’ve met him a couple of times before, once with Guy Ritchie in the West Hollywood supermarket Bristol Farms. Ritchie was getting a smoked-salmon bagel. He was larger-than-life, loud and friendly, and Statham nodded hello in the background, almost shyly.

If there was a turning point in the process of making him stand out as opposed to back, it was the Brit flick The Bank Job, released earlier this year. It won surprise acclaim and box-office figures. For Statham it showed that he was more than action hero. He had the brooding presence and quick wit necessary for thriller hero. He warms to the fact that I’ve seen it. “I’ve always wanted to mix it up as much as possible. You can’t keep playing the same record, can you? And you get bored doing the same thing. I’ve always wanted that extra bit of experience, and a good script is hard to find.” The Bank Job was written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

Statham, who had absolutely no acting training, has often said working on movies has been his drama school. The Bank Job was based on a real robbery of a bank in Baker Street in the 1970s. The period detail is so acute it reminds you of those McQueen and Newman 1970s thrillers. “They are my favourite two actors,” he says. I mention that he reminds me a little bit of Newman in his performance: understated, sparse, more instinctive than intellectual. “I don’t think you can mention me in the same sentence,” he says, worried about taking a compliment.

His success hasn’t changed his perspective on who he is and what he does. Surely if you do all your own stunts you can’t be afraid of a challenge? “Challenge is good and the more people who are prepared to accept you as an actor, the more you get challenging roles, but it’s only doing movies like the Transporter series [he was in Transporter 3, out December 5] and Crank [Crank 2 will be out in a few months] that allows me to be in that position. Otherwise I would have made a very small impact on the action world.”

For a long time martial arts were a part of his life. He does Thai boxing and jujitsu, the latter with Guy Ritchie, who once told me that he is really much better at it than Statham. “Well, he’s gonna say that, isn’t he?” Jason says, his small, brown eyes tightening. “But he won’t say that in front of me because I’ll strangle him.” And then he laughs. “Did he really say that? I mean, we are such idiots. We have such a competitive nature. We are always playing chess against each other or trying to strangle each other.

“There’s a great spirit that comes out of that and it’s all done in the most friendly way. It’s like, one day we’ll say, ‘Let’s see who can swim the most lengths underwater.’ We’re like two kids. As I used to be a diver, I’m more of a fish than old Guy. But when it comes to rolling around on mats in his garage, he has the upper hand.” He adds: “I’ve been with him a few times to the Budokwai centre [for martial arts in Chelsea], where he trains. If you try to use the techniques we use for movie fighting in real fighting, you’d get spanked and be left in a pool of your own blood. The two are completely different.”

For Statham, acting is very much about mastering the stunt. He would think it so unmanly to let someone else take his punches. “Growing up, I was the biggest James Bond fan. All I ever wanted to do was the Milk Tray advert, where the guy comes in, delivers the chocolate, jumps off a cliff and dives in. That Milk Tray advert is the reason I got into diving, although these days I’d be hanging around in a wardrobe waiting for her to be in bed, sneak in, slip under the sheets. F*** the chocolates.” We laugh. You can’t help but like him for that.

“There’s something about the adrenaline rush of doing a stunt, testing yourself, putting yourself under that type of pressure. It’s a great reward that comes from that. You are in a situation where you cannot think negatively. You have to commit completely to what you’re doing otherwise there are horrendous consequences. You could die,” he says, pleased and horrified with himself. “It’s one, two, three, action. The adrenaline is a great rush, and if you’re successful it’s rewarding. I love it, but it is quite stupid.”

It’s the realness of the stunts that gives him the edge, the one that takes people’s breath away. He can see I’m impressed, so he comes in with the downplay, “You get used to it.” Did you first get the taste for adrenaline through diving? “Yes. The first time you stand on a 10-metre platform, you see the bottom of the pool, you think, ‘F***, this is going to be quite painful if I get it wrong.’ You go up there, the morning session, the afternoon session, you get used to it, confidence comes. There’s progressions. You work your way up, higher and higher. And it’s the same with a fight routine. You learn a spinning kick. The more you do it, the more comfortable you feel and you inject some conviction. And I think it’s all about having that.”

Did you feel that you’d conquered the diving thing and just moved on? “No. I never thought I gave it my all. I was always f***ing around. It’s quite a small sport here. China and Russia have a different approach to training. They have one set of eyes watching two divers, whereas we had one coach to 15 divers. I think I felt we were always at a loss, though it’s got better now. That said, if I’d done better I might not be doing what I am now. So because I didn’t fulfil my potential in that sport, I am able to direct all my concentration on something that is much more rewarding, and financially rewarding as well.”

It’s been written that he was offered £5m for a role, and that he could be the first £20m-a-movie British actor. Selling on market stalls was his Italia Conti. “I would sit on a crate in Wembley market so that it looked like I was illegally there, even though I’d paid for my pitch. Confusion made the punters buy things quickly because they thought they were buying stolen goods. I’ve also done Argyle Street [off Oxford Street], which is a little bit more shaky because it is illegal. I enjoyed the markets totally because you never had to look out for the police. All you needed was a few stooges in the crowd. We used to make thousands of pounds.”

Statham was born in Sydenham, south London. His parents also used to work the markets, selling silver-plated trays. Now they’ve moved to the Canary Islands, where his dad sings Frank Sinatra songs and his mother helps in the performance by changing the tapes. Duckers and divers to the core, they used to have a mock auction shop. “It was a big, empty shop with a rostrum at the back. You sell hi-fi, china, glassware, cameras. Swag, basically. It’s a shop of what you would call ‘liquidation goods’. You say, ‘The boss has run away with my wife. What he’s doing to her I’m going to do with his business!’ –that kind of shit. You win the confidence of the crowd. You put them in promised land. You tell them you are going to give them more and more free gifts, all stuff to go. Basically you are acting on the public’s greed, and everyone is a greedy bastard, and the greedier they are the more they get hurt.” He laughs, a smirky little laugh. And then he gets nostalgic. “Sunday markets were a thriving living for us all, but now you can go up the high street on a Sunday and everyone’s got a sale on, and there’s car-boot sales where people would rather go and spend a fiver on shit they never use…” You begin to think that Guy Ritchie has based five movies all around this man. He is the man Guy Ritchie wants to be.

Was there some adrenaline involved in the selling of the fake perfume and jewellery?

“Well, you can’t be responsible for the way people spend their money.” Did you ever get into trouble with the police? “No-o-o,” he says mockingly, and then, “We got chased a few times and I had a few interactions with the police. Nothing too shaky that I want to talk about…” He chooses his words very carefully, like the way he used to sell gold chains, starting, “You’ve heard of Cartier…” He doesn’t want to seem like he did get into trouble with the police, but he certainly doesn’t want to seem like he didn’t.

“There are always trading standards and people trying to catch you out, thinking you are misrepresenting what you are selling. That’s how the trickery comes in. You have to word it very carefully and know what you are doing. The day I met Guy Ritchie it was almost from the heavens. Boom. Here’s a guy who can give you a career that you never, ever thought about. The opening scenes of Lock, Stock, he asked me to do what I was doing for a living anyway, so there was no acting. It was just, ‘We’ll put on the camera and away you go.’ ” He talks about Guy with huge affection, calling him “a terrific writer”, “an auteur”, “a man who knows what he wants”, “a man with vision”. He says: “Every time I get to see him I’m as happy as a pig in shit, but he’s working so much, and I’ve been working so much, so we don’t get to see each other as much as we’d like.” Statham certainly would have loved to do more movies with him. He did Lock, Stock, Snatch and Revolver. For a while Guy Ritchie’s movies were the only movies he did. But this year he did Transporter 3, Crank 2, The Bank Job and Death Race back to back. There’s been no time for Guy Ritchie movies.

Of course he loved Death Race because he loves cars, ever since he had the miniature version of the car from Goldfinger, the DB5 with an ejector seat. “When I heard that Paul [W S Anderson] was doing Death Race and I was actually sitting down with him, it was like, f***, these cars are the next level of what James Bond had. Mini guns on the bonnet, smoke, napalm, all the gadgetry. I’m a big car fanatic and I never had enough money to buy the cars I wanted.” You would have thought he got a few free after Transporter. “No. The first fast car I bought was an Audi RS6, which is a four-door family car with a twin turbo V8 engine and 450hp. They call it a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Is that what you are? “Do I look like a sheep?” No, he definitely seems more lupine. But there is something that hides what is within about him that makes you know he would be happy in a family car. Nothing suspicious, so you wouldn’t catch him out, find out who he really is.

“Now I have an Audi S8 450hp sedan. It’s a four-door family car. I like big luxury cars. So much more comfortable. You put the stereo on and they don’t draw as much attention as a spanked-out Ferrari.” Don’t you secretly crave a spanked-out Ferrari? “No-o-o,” he says, with that same ambiguity that might mean yes. “Having said that, because I did a substantial amount of training for Death Race and Transporter, three of those f***ers now, I’ve put in a lot of hours behind the wheel with a lot of stunt teams, so every time I do a new movie I learn a new skill, so I have recently bought the fastest Porsche 911 that’s ever been built. It’s a cross between a track car and a road car; you drive it to the track, kill it, then drive it home. My domestic driving is very calm and collected, but I do have a great appetite for all things that run fast on petrol.”

As much as he worked out with cars for Death Race, he worked out his body really hard. “I like to put myself under pressure. We all went down to California State Prison, Corcoran, which is one of the nastiest, biggest prisons in the US and has the most dangerous prisoners, murderers, rapists – the worst. We spent the day just looking at them. They were all bare-chested crims in the yard doing chin-ups, pull-ups, push-ups. They looked scary. It was like people preparing for war and only the strong survive. As I play this ex-convict who leads this different life for his kids but had a misspent youth in correctional facilities, they wanted my body to reflect that. They wanted to show the tatts. I don’t have any. They are all fake. What happened to me that I didn’t have any? Because of the diving. The coach says it looks a bit funny, and I was a good listener.”

So the tattoos were fake but the body wasn’t. How did you get that fit?

“By a lot of sacrifice. Clean eating, high protein, no sugar, no carbs, apart from a piece of toast in the morning. Fruit, nuts, berries. It was all about the diet and all about training with the Navy Seals for 10 weeks, six days a week, and it was like being smashed every day. If you are feeding your body only protein, your muscles will grow bigger. Calories have to come from somewhere and it eats away the fat. But it makes you cranky, you are not good company, you are antisocial. I couldn’t go out at all. I tried going out but, f***, I couldn’t do it and have a slice of turkey while everyone else was drinking. You have to lead a different lifestyle. You have to be extreme. You go to bed early because you get up early. You’re locked in, focused. That’s how you get results quick. It’s like being in a professional sport. In LA it’s easier to be healthy. The weather is nice. You don’t come home and want a nice shepherd’s pie when it’s raining, to warm you. So I think I do go to extremes. I go from super-healthy to super-unhealthy, with excessive drinking. When I come home and catch up with friends, that involves going down the boozer, and a fair amount of pints disappear down my gullet. I want to see my friends. We don’t want to give each other a massage, do we?”

That said, he looks pretty trim today. When I touched his arm saying hello, the muscles were as hard as rocks. “I think when you have trained in martial arts and different kinds of sporting activities – I love snowboarding, scuba-diving – you are automatically more conscious about what food you are putting in your body, so I know how to get back in shape very quickly.”

As his parents now live in the Canaries, he doesn’t get to see them much, although they do come to London from time to time. “My mum is a very good dancer. They do ballroom, the foxtrot. I would love to be able to do that. There’s something quite cool about seeing a good couple dance, d’you know?” he asks me, with a little glint in his eye. I ask him if he watches Strictly Come Dancing, where last year his ex-belle Kelly Brook was the hot favourite until she pulled out because her father, Ken Parsons, died. Parsons and Statham got on well. They liked each other a lot. Statham liked Kelly a lot. He was her first proper boyfriend.

He interjects: “I’ve been hooked on So You Think You Can Dance?” So will you be doing a reality dancing show? “That’s not on the menu, I’m afraid, Chrissy. No, that’s not happening.” He says this with almost schoolteacher sharpness. “But it would be nice to do a little tango or a little rock’n’roll jive. I love all the great musicals – West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain. My mum and dad were fanatical about those. I’ve seen those films many times. On the Town, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Donald O’Connor, Cyd Charisse. Brilliant. Great music, great physical drama. I love all that, very expressive.”

Interesting that in his anxiousness to move on from any segue to Kelly Brook, he has revealed his inner metrosexual. I used to know a famously macho man from the East End whose favourite movies were anything by Sam Peckinpah or starring Gene Kelly – The Wild Bunch and Singin’ in the Rain. Statham also likes extremes: extreme brutality and sentimentality, the hard and the soft, and ashamed of neither.

His favourite sport to watch is called cage-fighting. It’s set usually in Vegas in an octagonal cage. “It takes elements from judo, jujitsu, kick boxing, and you use every part of what is usable in a real fight situation. In its early days it used to be a kung-fu champion against a wrestling champion. The best man or the best art would win. I like to watch it. It’s pretty violent. You are fighting to knock someone out or put them in a submission, but I’ve never done that. I’m trying to sustain a career in front of the camera, so I don’t want to come out with cauliflower ears. I train only with people who are better than me; they don’t have anything to prove, so they’re not going to do anything stupid. It’s usually inexperienced people who don’t know their capabilities that can get stupid.”

Is there nothing that holds fear for you? “Well, it’s because you’re always afraid to some degree that you do it. It’s about mastering the nerves and trying to turn that into confidence. But do I get into sweats or panic? No, I don’t.” What about birds, spiders, snakes, flying? “No,” he shrugs.

“I suppose I wouldn’t want to be eaten by a shark. A great white shark wouldn’t be too good because you wouldn’t be able to swim away.”

Even his fears are rational. He used to shoot with Vinnie Jones – partridges, pheasants. “But I don’t think you should hunt anything unless you can eat it. I would love a dog. I wish I didn’t travel so much. I used to have an English bull terrier, a white one with slitty eyes. Ugly f***er.”

Of course, if he was a dog he would be that bull terrier with slitty eyes, loyal and fearless. He does worry, however, about continued success. “Because I’m aware what goes up must come down. Sometimes you gamble, sometimes you don’t. The more you do and the more successful you are, the better are the choices that become available, and the better protected you become, because you get better film makers and writers.” He’s very aware he’s on the cusp of greatness. It’s hard not to be afraid of coming down.

He clearly thrives on having a short stint in London, and he still keeps a home here. But he knows success is more likely to flourish in LA. “I’m going to stick around there. It’s healthier there and it’s where I do all my training.”

Have you got a significant other there? “I’ve got a little girlie there to keep me out of trouble, yeah.” Do you live together? “No. We don’t. I’m not talking about my personal life. I’ve always been good at keeping them out of the conversation. I’m very good at protecting them.”

I’m not surprised you don’t want to talk about her. You got a bit burnt last time. “Oh dear,” he says with the full mocking voice. “Did I?” The subject of Kelly is a closed and touchy subject with him, though it’s never been closed with her. I’ve met Kelly a few times. She’s pretty open about her emotions. “Jason and I are opposites,” she said. When I told her how hard it had been to track Jason down, she just laughed. “I knew him when I was 17 and he was working down the markets, driving a little battered blue van. He didn’t have a publicist then. Seriously, though, a big chunk of my life has been with Jason. We still speak from time to time to check in with each other. Ultimately we love each other and there is no animosity between us whatsoever.”

Their relationship dissolved after Brook met Billy Zane on a movie set on a Caribbean island. She’d always been clear she and Jason were never going to get married, but the British public had an eye for a fairy tale and wanted the last action hero and the dancing queen to live happily ever after together. That particular public obsession irks Statham, probably because he’s doing very well at living happily ever after on his own.

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