Guy Stuart Ritchie (born 10 September 1968) is an English filmmaker and businessman, known for his crime films. He left secondary school and got entry-level jobs in the film industry in the mid-1990s. Ritchie eventually went on to direct commercials. In 1995, he directed his first film, The Hard Case, a 20-minute short that impressed investors who backed his first feature film, the crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). He then directed another crime comedy, Snatch (2000). Ritchie\'s other films include Revolver (2005), RocknRolla (2008), Sherlock Holmes (2009), and its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011).\n', '

Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the second of two children of Amber (née Parkinson) and Captain John Vivian Ritchie (b. 1928), former Seaforth Highlanders serviceman and advertising executive. John\'s father was Major Stewart Ritchie, who died in France, in 1940, during World War II. John\'s mother was Doris Margaretta McLaughlin (b. 1896), daughter of Vivian Guy McLaughlin (b. 1865) and Edith Martineau (b. 1866), the latter by whom she shares close common ancestors with Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The McLaughlins have a pedigree going back to King Edward I of England. Both Richie\'s parents remarried to prominent individuals. His father\'s second marriage was to Shireen Ritchie, Baroness Ritchie of Brompton, a former model and later Conservative politician and life peer. From 1973 until 1980, when they divorced, Ritchie\'s mother was married to Sir Michael Leighton, 11th Baronet of Loton Park. As a divorcée, she is correctly styled as Amber, Lady Leighton.\n', '

Ritchie, who is dyslexic, was expelled from Stanbridge Earls School at the age of 15. He has claimed that drug use was the reason for the expulsion; his father has said that it was because his son was caught "cutting class and entertaining a girl in his room."\n', '

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