THE first time I met Guy Ritchie, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels had just had a successful pre-release screening in front of a bunch of film writers, and he was like an innocent, wide-eyed kid who couldn't believe his luck.

Not only had he finally got to make a 'real' film but people actually seemed to like it! In truth, at the time most of us were more interested in Vinnie Jones, who was there with Ritchie, and his role in the film.

Things were very different next time around, when Guy was talking up his next film Snatch. Lock, Stock ... had turned out to be a bona-fide phenomenon, spawning a number of films which simply aped its `geezer chic', and, as a result, Snatch featured hot Hollywood names such as Brad Pitt.

More to the point, Guy was romantically linked with Madonna, one of the world's most famous women, and was at the centre of a media whirlwind which, even from the outside, looked terrifying.

Vinnie was again at his side, whether you liked it or not, and, even though he appeared in Snatch, his function was, pretty clearly from the various growls, grimaces and threatening gestures that he interjected, to put the wind up anyone who might venture too close to the forbidden subject of Madonna.

Let's flash forward to this week's world premiere of Ritchie's latest, RocknRolla, past several years of intense media scrutiny and diminishing artistic returns on his films, especially Swept Away, starring his missus, which had indeed been swept away by a veritable tsunami of hostile reviews and public indifference.

Despite the fact that we're sitting in the indisputably strange setting of a disused warehouse behind London's Oxo Tower, decorated at enormous expense by Warner Brothers films with all sorts of RocknRolla product, Ritchie is, unlike our last, fraught meeting, the very epitome of relaxed.

Dismissive quip

Whenever the subject of Madonna crops up, he's always ready with a mildly entertaining but dismissive quip although, interestingly, throughout the afternoon and in all sorts of different contexts, `Madonna' is a word he never actually uses at any time, preferring 'my wife' or, once, 'the American'.

"Film making is a fantasy come true for me and something I'm tremendously enthuasiastic about as a job," he says.

"The idea that someone would give you a pile of cash to go away and make something that you'd love to make for yourself anyway - what's there to complain about? RocknRolla is exactly the type of movie that I'd want to see and, you know what, all the other stuff really doesn't mean a thing when you get to achieve that.

"Getting married to the woman I fell in love with had an enormous impact on my life," he admits, "and changed it more than anything in my career because she is so hugely famous. You have to become philosophical quickly because you can't survive that sort of scrutiny otherwise. I eventually realised that you can't have a balanced life, whether you're famous or not, if you care too much what people think of you.

Experience

"I have to admit, though, that I'm having a better time talking about this film than I have done for the last two. When you can sense a room full of hostility because, for whatever reasons they might have, people don't like your film, that doesn't make for a very enjoyable experience," he laughs.

"With this film, it feels mostly as if people are enjoying it, that they get it, which obviously makes things easier."

Despite their lack of success, he says he still likes Revolver and Swept Away.

"In fact, Revolver, because it was so experimental, might be my favourite film and I certainly stand by it. With Swept Away, I might have been a bit naïve in trying to make a very small film about something completely different. Now I see that it might not have been the time to start experimenting!"

RocknRolla is, he admits, "the sort of film that people expect me to do but that doesn't matter, because I love it and I had a great time making it." There is, in fact, already a script for a potential sequel "if this one does well enough" but his next film will be Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr.

"That should be very stylish," he says. "There's about a million reasons why I was drawn to that. I wanted to illustrate a London that's never been seen before and I hope I can get way with that. It allows me to make an intellectual action movie, in theory, in a city that I love."

It's been reported that Alan Horn, the president of the Warner Brothers studio, which funded RocknRolla via uber-action producer Joel Silver, thinks that the film is "too English" so has qualms about releasing it wide in America

"How can a film set in London be too English?", he enquires. "An American film can't be 'too American', can it? Anyway, I think my taste is somewhere between the two. I married an American, didn't I!"

RocknRolla is out now. Click here to read a review.