VINNIE JONES almost ended it all before making it big in the movies after the press turned on the former soccer star. The Welsh tough guy took a gun and was only stopped from blowing his brains out by the intervention of his pet dog and the thought of what his death would do to his wife.

He says, "I'd opened my mouth too often and I was getting hammered in the papers. I felt I had lost my dignity, and I didn't even want to get up in the mornings. So I walked to the back of my house...Then my dog came from nowhere and startled me. I thought of Tanya and realised she had been through enough already. It made me put my life in perspective."

Two years later Jones won rave reviews after appearing in GUY RITCHIE's debut film lock, stock And Two Smoking Barrels (1998) about East End London gangsters. (BRC/WNS)

Source: WENN