Matthew Vaughn
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).
"Matthew Vaughan" redirects here. For the politician, see Matthew Vaughan-Davies, 1st Baron Ystwyth.
Matthew Vaughn
- Film director
- film producer
- screenwriter
1996–present
3
Early life[edit]
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 today as Vaughn's professional name, though he now 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[edit]
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 will be distributed by Apple TV+, who obtained the rights for $200 million, and will also be released in cinemas to be distributed by Universal Pictures.[23]
In January 2024, Vaughn announced that he would be producing a third Kick-Ass film, titled 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[edit]
On 25 May 2002, Vaughn married German supermodel Claudia Schiffer in Suffolk.[25] The couple have a son and two daughters.[26][27] They have homes in Notting Hill, London, Northamptonshire and Coldham Hall, Stanningfield, Suffolk.[28]