Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear this show at KCRW.com. I'm here at the Toronto Film Festival.

The man who got a start as a street peddler, went on to the fine British street cool in movies with Guy Ritchie, made a remake of a Sophester Stallone movie, then did a movie with Sylvester Stallone, the Expendables, and now in his newest film, Killer Elite, he's working with Robert DeNiro. My guest is jason statham thanks so much for being

here nice one to be here thanks Elvis did you know that when you did um death race that salone had

been in it of course yes i've seen every movie that man's made you've a favorite of his um first blood

i think you know rocky of course is hard to get away from. You know, he had the

script and he wanted to be in it and the studios didn't want him to buy it from him and he

stuck to his guns and he ended up being in the movie and it was, you know, I love stories like

that. You feel like that a little bit yourself? I mean, you've kind of had a very similar path. You know, it's, I fell into movies by mistake, you know.

It really was a mistake?

It wasn't, I wouldn't say a mistake.

It's a very, a very happy moment for me to think I had a change of career.

But, you know, if I had to meet Guy Ritchie, who knows what I've been doing, probably

selling Peruvium and Jewel jewelry as I always was before that.

So I'm not saying a mistake.

It was just a fortunate meeting of a man who had some material that he thought, you know,

that I could do some justice to because I was a, you know, a street trader for many, many years.

And one of the chaps that he'd written about was basically doing in a

movie what I did for, you know, ever since I left school. What was it like the first time

you saw yourself on screen? It's always weird, you know, it's, uh, but I, the, the material was,

you know, it was a black comedy. It was a very funny, uh, the material was funny. The characters were, you know, extremely easy black comedy it was a very funny uh the material's funny the characters

were you know extremely easy to watch and um you know it was more about the film rather than

an analysis on my performance because i was just a lot of the the dialogue that i brought to the game

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