Vincent Peter Jones (born 5 January 1965) is a British actor, presenter, and former professional footballer.

Jones played professionally as a defensive midfielder from 1984 to 1999, notably for Wimbledon, Leeds United, Sheffield United, Chelsea, and Queens Park Rangers. He also played for and captained the Welsh national team, having qualified through a Welsh grandparent. Best remembered for his time at Wimbledon as a pivotal member of the famous "Crazy Gang", he won the 1988 FA Cup final with the London side, a club for which he played over 200 games during two spells between 1986 and 1998. He played 184 games in the Premier League, in which he scored 13 goals.^[1] Throughout his career, Jones gained a reputation for adding steel to a team, with his highly aggressive and physically uncompromising style of play, earning him a "hard man" image on and off the field, and on screen, where he is often typecast as violent criminals and thugs.

As an actor, his film and television career began with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), for his performance winning an Empire Award for Best Newcomer, then in Snatch (2000), he won the Empire Award for Best British Actor. Other notable credits include Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Mean Machine (2001), The Big Bounce (2004), Extras (2005), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), The Riddle (2007), The Midnight Meat Train (2008), Year One (2009), The Cape (2011), Fire with Fire (2012), The Musketeers (2014), MacGyver (2016), NCIS: Los Angeles (2019), Rise of the Footsoldier Origins (2021); and, against type, in The Gentlemen (2024).

Vincent Peter Jones was born on 5 January 1965,^[2][3][4] in Watford, Hertfordshire,^[2][3][4] the son of Glenda (née Harris) and gamekeeper Peter Jones. He attended schools in nearby Bedmond and Abbots Langley, and captained his school's football team, and played for his local football team in the village of Bedmond, in the Three Rivers District of Hertfordshire.^[5] One of his grandmothers was Irish from Dublin,^[6] and the other was Welsh, which later qualified him to play for Wales.^[5]

In 1998, Jones made his film debut in Guy Ritchie's crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, in which he played a mob enforcer named Big Chris.^[28] For his performance, he won the Empire Award for Best Newcomer in 1999.^[29]

He has since been typecast in similar roles as criminals or villains, including the dapper gun-for-hire "Bullet-Tooth Tony" in Guy Ritchie's 2000 follow up Snatch, for which Jones won the Best British Actor at the 6th Empire Awards in 2001.^[30] Jones became known to American audiences in the 2000 film remake of Gone in 60 Seconds, in which he played Sphinx.^[5] Although this was a major role with significant screen time, he only had one line of dialogue because his character was a silent, tough brawler. He teamed up with director Dominic Sena again the following year for the thriller Swordfish,^[31] in which he played one of John Travolta's henchmen.^[5]

Jones played Danny Meehan in Mean Machine, a 2001 British remake of the Burt Reynolds film The Longest Yard.^[5] He played a former captain of the England national football team, who is sent to prison and subsequently takes control of a team of inmates who play against the prison guards' team. In the 2004 Japanese film Survive Style 5+, he played a hitman from Britain. He played another football role as Mad Maynard, the leader of a Manchester United football hooligan firm, in the 2004 film EuroTrip.^[5] His next role was in the 2006 film, X-Men: The Last Stand,^[5] as the comic book villain Juggernaut, alongside Halle Berry.^[32] He said that he would like to play Juggernaut in a spin-off. One of his lines in the film ("I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!") was based on a pre-existing Internet parody.^[32] The same year, he was featured in another football film, She's the Man, as the coach of the Illyria team. In 2007,^[31] he played McStarley in The Condemned, a film about death row inmates forced to fight to the death on a remote island.^[33]

Jones was a housemate on the reality television show Celebrity Big Brother 7 in 2010, and celebrated his 45th birthday while he participated.^[34] He received loud cheers as he entered the house and was the favourite to win going into the house, but he did not maintain popularity with the public; the crowd chanted "get Vinnie out" on the final night and booed him as he left the house after he finished in third place. Speaking of his experience on the show, he said: "It was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in there – and I was Jack Nicholson."^[35]

Jones played a professional killer in the Kazakhstani film Liquidator in 2011.^[31] His character is an elite assassin invited to eliminate the main character. Producers of the film dealt with the Kazakh-to-English language barrier by writing Jones' character as a mute who does not speak. In the same year, he played Zed in the movie Blood Out. He played a role in the Hungarian film The Magic Boys in 2012.^[31] That same year, he voiced Freddie the Dog in Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.^[31] He co-starred alongside Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action-thriller Escape Plan,^[31] released in 2013, and was featured with Danny Trejo in the 2014 horror-thriller Reaper.^[31]

In 2021, Jones competed in the third season of the Australian version of The Masked Singer as "Volcano". He was the first contestant eliminated.^[36]

Having met Tanya Terry when they were both 12 years old and next-door neighbours in Watford, Jones later married her in 1994.^[5] Tanya had a daughter by her first husband, footballer Steve Terry. Jones has a son, Aaron Elliston-Jones, with his ex-girlfriend Mylene Elliston. Aaron was born in 1991.

In November 2013, Jones received treatment after finding signs of skin cancer below his eye.^[37] At some point, his wife was also diagnosed with skin cancer, which then spread to her brain by 2018. Jones was at her bedside during her death from cancer on 6 July 2019.^[38] He discussed her death during an appearance on Piers Morgan's Life Stories in September 2020,^[39] and said that he does not plan to remarry.^[40] Jones penned an autobiography called Vinnie: The Autobiography,^[41] which was later revised and reprinted to include information on his first film appearance. Since 2021, he has divided his time between Los Angeles and Petworth, West Sussex.^[42] He is a supporter of the Conservative Party and once described himself as "very proud of being British, very pro the monarchy, and very conservative".^[43]

Wealdstone

• Alliance Premier League: 1984–85

IFK Holmsund

• Division 3 Mellersta Norrland: 1986^[50]

Wimbledon

• FA Cup: 1987–88

Leeds United

• Football League Second Division: 1989–90