But “he didn’t act until well into his thirties,” Huntington-Whiteley explained, “so he had a big part of his life where he was a painter and a decorator and he was on the doorstep of clubs and on the market stall, trading.”

His years of improvisation meant that “he’s got that real foundation,” he summed up about Statham, celebrating his 59th birthday on July 26, “and I love the fact that he’ll pass that on to our son, too.”

Not that the two of them had rushed towards that particular milestone.

Rather, they strove to build that foundation and its official launch came at the 2011 Conference. vanity fair Oscar party, followed by a trip up the Met Gala stairs months later, just weeks before she made her big screen debut in Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

His jump to the big screen had come pretty fast and furious. “I got a phone call,” he told Glamor in 2013. “I had an audition. Three weeks later I was on set.” But, like Statham, he spent his formative years strutting his way to success.