Vince Vaughn - Biography

Name: Vince Vaughn

Born: 28 March 1970 (Age: 39)

Where: Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

Height: 6'5"

Awards: No Major Awards yet

What exactly IS Vince Vaughn? Tied in with Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Ben Stiller et al he's a star of comedies, but he's not simply a comedian. Though he's played merciless killers in an unusually high percentage of his films, he's never a mere bad guy. MCing his own Wild West Show across the States, he's an exhilarating onstage improviser, but also a patient craftsman before the cameras. He's an able chat show host, but is never considered to be superficial. When Swingers made him Hollywood's Next Big Thing and, later, a relationship with Jennifer Aniston took him into the celebrity stratosphere, he was at ease with fame yet never seemed to court it. It could said that he's a jack of all trades. It could also be said that he has it all.

He was born Vincent Anthony Vaughn on the 28th of March, 1970, in Minneapolis, his ancestors being of Lebanese, Italian, English, Irish and German extraction. His father's work, though, selling meat for Swift And Co, saw the family move within two weeks to Buffalo Grove, a well-to-do northern suburb of Chicago. Vince's birth would complete the Vaughn family unit. There was dad Vernon, mum Sharon, sisters Victoria and Valerie, and now young Vincent.

Vernon Vaughn hailed from rural stock, his own father being an Ohio dairy farmer. Vernon, though, had bigger plans and worked his way through college, in the summers toiling in steel mills and taking night shifts at a mental institution. He'd be the first Vaughn to move away from the farm, and would continue his remorseless ascent. As he rose to become a very successful rep for a toy manufacturer, he took the family on from Buffalo Grove to the decidedly wealthy Lake Forest, on Lake Michigan just north of Chicago, living first in an apartment, then a large house. His efforts to better himself would give son Vincent a strong work ethic, a quality compounded by the long hours put in by Sharon, a former beauty queen who started as a beautician, then moved into real estate and finally, once she'd divorced from Vernon in 1991, became one of the top independent financial brokers in America.

Unfortunately for young Vincent, this work ethic was initially a drawback, as was the fierce independent streak he'd picked up from his parents. He did not take to the strictures of school, academia didn't interest him and he had problems with authority. His hyperactivity and a challenging nature led him to be sent to a psychiatrist and placed in special education classes once a day, where he joined the school's other young outcasts. At first he hated it, considering himself - a very popular student - to be far above these misfits and weirdos.

Soon he would soften, recognising the others as troubled individuals and coming to see himself as Jack Nicholson's McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The experience would teach him an empathy crucial to his later success.

. Despite his dislike for schooling, Vincent did find an activity to interest him. With Vernon and Sharon out working, during the summers they'd send him to extra classes, treating them as a constructive form of babysitting. Thus Vincent found himself spending whole days in a community theatre, where kids up to the age of 13 would rehearse and perform musicals. Encouraged by his grandmother, who'd once aspired to be an actress, and by his theatre-loving mother, he threw himself into it, finding joy in entertaining others. By the age of 8 he was starring as Daddy Warbucks in Annie. He'd appear in plays, too, in Junior High. At home his showbiz education would be continued by Vernon, a huge movie fan, who'd spend many hours watching films with his son, particularly his beloved westerns.

When the Vaughns moved to Lake Forest, Vincent's school record went with them, meaning that he had to endure special ed classes until he was 13 (Lake Forest High School, incidentally, was the one used in Robert Redford's Ordinary People). Outside of this, though his academic grades were still poor, he retained his popularity and began to excel at football and wrestling. Of course, he was now a big boy, eventually growing to 6' 5". He was also something of a tearaway, hanging with a fast crowd. At 14 he and his friends pooled their money to buy a $799 Chevy Hatchback in which they'd scream through the streets. He'd go drinking, fighting and stealing road signs and was arrested on several occasions. Theatre, throughout his wild mid-teens, was forgotten.

It took a near-death experience to bring him back to the stage. At 17, riding as a passenger in a friend's Jeep, he was badly injured when the vehicle flipped over, damaging both his thumb and his back. At first there were fears that he'd never regain mobility, but two weeks in hospital saw him recover. Well, almost recover, the doctors advising him to give up his sporting activities forthwith. Now lost for things to fill his time, his eyes turned to theatre once again and he applied for a part in a forthcoming school production of A Chorus Line. As it happened, they had the perfect role for him. Any kid playing Paul San Marco, the drag queen confounded by an injured knee, was bound to receive a righteous taunting from his school-mates. No one was keen. Vince, though, a sports star very popular with the girls, possessed unimpeachable macho credentials. He was in, and this time he was hooked.

Of course, a career in acting was not one Vaughn's high-earning parents would have chosen for him. But their son had finally found his own niche, a source of excitement and inspiration. After another High School play, he quickly jumped in the deep end.

Going along to a friend's audition, he was asked to test for the producers and scored a screen debut in a sex education short, playing a charmer trying to talk his girlfriend into bed. Though he'd promised his parents he wouldn't take professional jobs till he was 18, his momentum was inexorable. He won local ad work in Chicago, an Indiana farm insurance commercial and then - thrillingly for a young lad - a national TV ad for Chevrolet, playing a teenager awestruck when his older brother tosses him the keys to the motor. The Heartbeat of America, indeed.

. And, true, to his parents' ideals and methodologies, he worked, seizing experience wherever possible. He studied with Del Close, a Second City veteran now running ImprovOlympic, and trained with Shakespeare coach David Darlow, engaging in a summer workshop called Shakespeare to Suzuki to learn dancing, singing, speaking, even breathing and walking. His comic abilities saw him try stand-up but this, he believed, was not the way to go. Having become senior class president in the clear knowledge that he'd have to make a speech at graduation and would therefore be less likely to fail, he graduated from Lake Forest High School in 1988 and, exhibiting an optimism and self-confidence bordering on the psychotic, took off for LA, secure in the belief that his Chevy success would soon see him kicking down the doors of Hollywood.

The poor sod didn't stand a chance. The ad meant nothing to producers or casting agents and he was destined for years of oblivion. And so the work continued. Still under pressure from his parents to give himself the best chance of success, he enrolled at Santa Monica Junior College and further pursued his interest in improv and the classics. Taking a one-bed apartment in unfashionable East Hollywood, he'd begin to hang out locally, shooting the breeze with other wannabe actors, inadvertently building his breakthrough character, Trent Walker. For pin money he'd have fellow out-of-towners crash on mattresses on the floor. The Vaughns were always good at making money.

With an agent onboard, roles were forthcoming, but they were few and very far between. He made a TV debut in China Beach, a drama series set on a US base during the Vietnam war, popping up as a motor-pool driver as Dana Delany's McMurphy is kidnapped and forced to operate on Charley's wounded leader. There'd be another tiny part in 21, Jump Street where Johnny Depp was part of a squad of young-looking cops dealing in youth crime, in this episode investigating a teacher who's hired Donovan Leitch to kill his wife. And that was it for 1989. And 1990. For cash he took to telemarketing (another advantage when it came to a later role). He was stll studying hard, and still only 20, but he had to face the fact that the golden boy of that Chevy ad simply wasn't golden enough. He would take no holidays, feeling he hadn't earned one.

1991 would bring hope - slim but real - when he scored another small role in Lies Of The Heart, a CBS After School Special where Christopher Rydell, a high school superstar about to enrol at Harvard, suffers dreadful pangs of conscience before admitting to a hit and run accident that will wreck his career. Vaughn would then rejoin Rydell in For The Boys, a weepie drama where Bette Midler and James Caan entertained US troops over a 50 year period. Sadly, where Rydell was credited high, Vaughn was just a soldier in a cheering crowd. Blink and you'd have missed him. In fact, you didn't even have to blink. But it was a part, an addition to the CV, as was his appearance in the TV series Doogie Howser MD, created by David E Kelley who'd later find fame with Chicago Hope and Ally McBeal. The show was originally based on the fertile premise that a boy genius becomes a fully-fledged doctor. By now, though, Howser was no boy and was dealing with teen problems, making the series a prototype Dawson's Creek.

. At last, despite narrowly missing out on a part in Dazed And Confused (featuring then-wannabes Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey and Joey Lauren Adams), 1993 would bring some joy. Not a sudden surge, not a rampant success, but a middling hit and, far more importantly, a vital connection. The film involved was Rudy, a feel-good sports movie where Sean Astin - too short, too light and too goddamn wimpy to play football for Notre Dame - manages to force his way into the team through sheer perseverance and will-power. In his first cinematic speaking role, Vaughn would play a team-mate of Astin's, a poor sap tongue-lashed and dropped. Well-received, the movie would make $22 million in the States, and Vaughn would also benefit greatly from his involvement as he made close friends with an actor further up the bill, a fellow Chicago boy named Jon Favreau. Four years Vaughn's senior, Favreau had been living a similar life and suffering similar failure for that little bit longer than Vaughn. Now he was writing a comic expose of his world, a life of setbacks, self-obession, broken relationships and crazy hopes. In Vaughn he had found both his central character and an ally in perfecting the script and hawking it around. Together they'd study hard, constantly visiting the New Beverly Theatre.

Favreau's Swingers would not hit the nation's screens till 1996. In the meantime, Vaughn would make only one movie appearance, in Elana Pyle's At Risk. This was a cautionary tale of AIDS in the heterosexual community, a noir melodrama that saw Pyle return to America in search of former lover Vaughn who, it turns out, has disappeared. As she searches for him, she remembers in flashback their first meeting, in the office of a detective she was hiring to spy on her cheating husband, and she recalls their passionate and unprotected sex.

And now came Swingers.

When Vaughn had first arrived in LA, the club scene had been gripped by glam metal, the likes of Guns N' Roses and Poison being the hip bands of the day. Gradually, though, the lipstick and hairspray had been phased out in favour of sharp suits and Rat Pack cool. Swing music was back and Vaughn embraced the scene, hanging at the Dresden Rooms and the Three Of Clubs. This would be the basis of Favreau's movie, where Favreau himself played a paranoid wannabe actor distraught at the loss of his girlfriend and struggling to find his feet in LA. Enter best buddy Vince, the coolest, smoothest swinger in town, sharing with his friend the moves, attitude and lingo necessary if you want to be money and hunt those beautiful babies down. While Favreau was superb as the down-trodden, self-destructive loser, endlessly sabotaging his own opportunities to score, Vaughn was hilarious as the unashamed predator, charismatic, merciless and ultimately flawed.

. Swingers had been made on a budget of just $250,000 and made 20 times that at the US box office alone. Having struggled so hard to bring their vision to the screen, now Favreau and Vaughn reaped the benefits, Vaughn in particular. His star turn brought him to the attention of Steven Spielberg who immediately cast him in his upcoming follow-up to Jurassic Park where he'd play a video documentarian with a secret agenda who joins Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore on a second island of dinosaurs. Suddenly, Vaughn was the Next Big Thing. Why, you could even buy an action figure of him.

It's possible he could have taken it further, pressed home his advantage by playing the series of charming comic rogues he was offered. But, after all those years of classes he would fight shy of such typecasting, instead usually choosing to play a more literal form of lady-killer. His stint as Hollywood's new golden boy did not last long. By the very next year Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had stolen his and Favreau's poor-boys-made-good thunder with Good Will Hunting, while Titanic made Leonardo DiCaprio the brightest new star in decades.

Still, the chance to work regularly was now his. In Just Your Luck an old man died in a cafe on learning he'd won $6 million in a lottery. Virginia Madsen would try to persuade the other customers to keep the winning ticket and share the loot, while Jon Favreau would be a gambler deep in debt, who pulls a gun and causes a panic that leaves two dead. Confusion reigned as greed took over, with extra chaos being added by Vaughn and Mike Starr as two cops who keep dropping in for free food, disrupting attempts to dispose of the bodies.

Following Jurassic Park 2, Vaughn would find himself starring alongside Speilberg's wife Kate Capshaw in The Locusts. This was a Tennessee Williams-style slice of southern gothic strangeness, with Vaughn playing a troubled drifter befriended by decent local lass Ashley Judd.

But Vaughn has a terrible secret linking him to sultry widow Capshaw and her disturbed son Jeremy Davies, and soon overwrought passion takes over and events spiral down in to darkness. Far less fraught would be A Cool, Dry Place where Vaughn would play a former top-notch lawyer now pursuing silly small town cases and, once his flaky wife Monica Potter has done a runner, bringing up his toddler son alone. When he strikes up a sweet relationship with cute vet's assistant Joey Lauren Adams, however, Potter would return to confuse matters. Could the good-heared Vaughn possibly get to keep Adams, an excellent new job AND the boy?

. Vaughn's onscreen relationship with Adams would spill over into real life. The couple had met in a bar back in late 1996, gone on a few dates, but nothing had come of it. Now, after Vaughn had been briefly connected to his Locusts co-star Ashley Judd, he and Adams hit it off for real, spending a couple of years together.

Onscreen, he'd be ubiquitous in 1998. After A Cool, Dry Place would come Return To Paradise, where Vaughn, David Conrad and Joaquin Phoenix would play American tourists who meet up in Malaysia and enjoy a holiday awash with girls, rum and cheap hash. However, when Vaughn and Conrad return to New York Phoenix is caught with the leftover drugs, enough to bring charges of trafficking, and sentenced to death. Thus lawyer Anne Heche flies to the Big Apple to try to persuade the others to return. If both come back then all three lads will serve three years. If only one returns then he and Phoenix get six years each. If neither agrees Phoenix dies. Vaughn would face the toughest choice. As a limo driver living in a dreary Brooklyn bedsit with bars at the windows, he could be said to be imprisoned already. A steamy affair with Heche would not make his choice any easier.

Following this would come black, black comedy Clay Pigeons, a rapid reunion with Joaquin Phoenix. Here Phoenix would play a small town guy enjoying an affair with his best friend's wife. The friend finds out and kills himself, making it look as if Phoenix has done the dirty. In turn Phoenix tries to make it look like suicide but only succeeds in incriminating himself in a serial killer case currently being investigated by agent Janeane Garofalo. And all the while there's Vince, a friendly aw-shucks truck-driver with a maniacal laugh who seems to know far more than an innocent man should. His bar-room flirtation with Garofalo was a masterpiece of murderous innuendo.

After lending his voice to Loki, master of mischief, in a Norse-flavoured episode of the animated series Hercules, Vaughn would see his final release of 1998, by far the riskiest. This was Psycho, a near frame-by-frame remake of Hitchcock's classic thriller, directed by Gus Van Sant, whose Good Will Hunting had taken the Hollywood heat off Vaughn the year before.

The iconic status of the original meant that Vaughn and Van Sant were on seriously unsteady ground, many were itching to see them fall flat on their faces. Once again Vaughn would feature with Anne Heche and Julianne Moore, Heche being in the doomed Janet Leigh role with Vaughn taking Anthony Perkins' place. Wisely, Vaughn did not attempt to ape Perkins' masterful exhibition of twitching weirdness, instead portraying Norman Bates as a porn-reading perv, getting his rocks off as he spies on an undressing Heche. However, this more contemporary characterisation removed Bates' strange innocence and his compelling battle with his own sexual urges. They said you couldn't better Hitchcock's Psycho, and they're still saying it. Nevertheless, Vaughn's efforts were commendable enough to see him spared the critics' knife-blows.

. 2000 would see another rush of Vaughn releases - three very different dramas that had him further distancing himself from comedy. First came South Of Heaven, West Of Hell, a subversive gothic western directed by and starring musician Dwight Yoakam. Set in Tucson in 1900, this saw Yoakam as a one-time outlaw now acting as sheriff, his dirty past being revealed when Vince and his old gang of murderous marauders ride into town. Yoakam moves on to another town and takes up with actress Bridget Fonda, only to have Vaughn queer his patch once again, making a confrontation inevitable. It was a messy movie, with Yoakam keen to conjure a wild outback of drunks, rapists, killers and whores and people it with such cinematic renegades as Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Fonda and Paul Reubens, but again Vaughn came through unscathed.

Next would come a far more mainstream project in The Cell, a vehicle for multi-media superstar Jennifer Lopez. Here Lopez would play a social worker called in to help when Vaughn's agent captures serial killer Vincent D'Onofrio. The killer's next intended victim is trapped and soon to die, but he won't say where so, using state-of-the-art technology, Lopez enters the killer's mind, a very dangerous and upsetting place. Vaughn, meanwhile, is a picture of bureau efficiency as he first seeks the victim, then attempts to keep Lopez safe. It could have been monumentally foolish, but director Tarsem Singh successfully produced an art-house police thriller convincing in its own virtual reality.

From buzzing briskly around after La Lopez, Vaughn now took on a major challenge, one that most Hollywood actors must face at some point in their career. The big question was this: could he avoid being blown off the screen by Ed Harris? In The Prime Gig, by playing to his strengths and drawing on some worldly experience, he managed it with some style. Here he'd play a cocky conman who, down on his luck, is drawn into scam guru Harris's plot to sell shares in a ficticious gold mine to greedy marks.

After his years in telemarketing, Vaughn was just right for the part - his bullying and cajoling phone calls provided the film's best moments - while his innate charm made sense of his complicating affair with Harris's partner and assistant Julia Ormond.

. Having turned up as another shady character in an episode of Sex And The City, bedding Sarah Jessica Parker and promising her the world when she visits LA, he moved on to a reunion with Jon Favreau in Made. Here they'd play low-level street-types, with Favreau an ex-boxer who needs money to save girlfriend Famke Janssen from a life of prostitution. Vaughn, meanwhile, is a motor-mouth wally who's aching to join the Mob and persuades Favreau to help him do a job for godfather Peter Falk. Thus they end up entangled with New York gangster Sean Combs, Vaughn's bluster and bullshit getting them ever deeper into trouble.

Vaughn's next appearance of 2001 saw him pop up in Ben Stiller's comedy Zoolander, playing the coal-mining brother of the titular male model. Though onscreen he'd avoided out-and-out comedy since Swingers (actually, even Swingers was not an out-and-out comedy), he had maintained comedy connections and, through his long improv training, fitted well into the scene. Back in 1997 he'd spoofed The Lost World at the MTV Movie Awards and met Stiller when satirising Titanic in the same way. He'd worked with Stiller's friends David Cross and Bob Odenkirk on an episode of Mr Show, he'd hosted Saturday Night Live and appeared on The Larry Sanders Show. Zoolander would draw him properly into the new comedy fold, making him a member of the fledgling Frat Pack, featuring Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen and Luke Wilson and Jack Black.

Vaughn would slip back into Swingers mode for an episode of Going To California. Here two small-town New England guys would cross the country looking for a buddy and planning to wind up on the West Coast, meeting an array of wacky characters along the way. Vince would appear as a fashion photographer in South Beach, handing out Es and swanning around nightclubs with a bevy of models. Onscreen and off, he seemed to be having a whale of a time. But it wasn't all rosy. In April, 2001, while filming Domestic Disturbance in Wilmington, North Carolina, Vaughn visited a bar with screenwriter Scott Rosenberg and co-star Steve Buscemi. Some jealous locals started hurling insults so Vaughn asked one of them to step outside. The pair ended up shaking hands without further trouble, but the crowd of around 40 people who'd followed them out grew agitated, particularly 21-year-old Tim Fogerty, who'd been drinking while on prescription drugs and proceeded to pull out a pocket-knife. Buscemi attempted to kick the weapon out of his hand, missed and received terrible wounds as Fogerty stabbed him in the head, throat and arm.

Vaughn and Rosenberg were, of course, horrified by the attack and enraged when Fogerty's friend Kenneth Purgason turned to them and expressed his pleasure at seeing Buscemi cut up, another fight breaking out. In court, Vaughn and Rosenberg would plead no contest to charges of misdemeanour assault, Vaughn being fined $250, ordered to undergo alcohol assessment and banned from every bar in Wilmington.

. Domestic Disturbance itself, directed by Harold Becker, saw John Travolta as a good-natured boat builder who comes to worry for the safety of his 12-year-old son when his ex-wife Teri Polo takes up with rich guy Vince. At the wedding Vaughn's old pal Steve Buscemi shows up, hinting at Vaughn's dark past and, indeed, Vaughn becomes creepier and creepier, more and more dangerous. It wasn't as well done as you'd expect from the director of Sea Of Love, but it was a chance for Vaughn to add another headcase to his CV - all of them having been very human and very different from your average movie psycho.

Clearly feeling he'd proved himself as an actor outside the comedy sphere, Vaughn would now spend a couple of years in the company of his funny buddies. Old School, which gave the gang of friends their Frat Pack moniker, would see him team up with Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell as three chums who, due to breakups and maturity issues, wind up forming their own fraternity on the outskirts of their local college. Vaughn, married with a kid, is at first reluctant, then drawn into the chaos as the Animal House antics begin. Crammed with cheap nudity and rampant exhibitionism, it was thoroughly low-grade stuff but caught the imagination of the American public enough to take $74 million, three times its budget. The guys were on a roll.

Vaughn would next take a brief sojourn in England to film Blackball, directed by Brit comedy stalwart Mel Smith. Here Paul Kaye would play a rebellious crown green bowler (yes, it was about bowls) who challenges the fusty old establishment with his punky leanings. Vince, meanwhile, would be a slimy agent who uses his connections to turn bowls into a huge sport and makes Kaye a star. But could Kaye lead the Brits to victory over the brash and seemingly unbeatable Aussies? No one really cared. Far better, but seen by a similarly small audience, was I Love Your Work where Giovanni Ribisi played a new star suffering meltdown under the pressure of work and fame. Vaughn would make a cameo showing as a rival actor who's after Ribisi's wife, Franka Potente. Or maybe Ribisi just thinks he is.

In 2004, in the company of his comic cousins, Vaughn would enter a run of big hits. First of these would be Starsky And Hutch, an update of the hit Seventies TV series with Stiller and Owen Wilson in the title roles and Will Ferrell as a hilarious incarcerated freak.

The leads' casual banter would sell the film, but the real meat would be provided by Vaughn as the slick, murderous bad guy who's invented a tasteless form of cocaine undetectable by sniffer dogs. Accompanied by glamorous moll Juliette Lewis (who'd earlier been a sexy catalyst in Old School), he'd be forever wreathed in sinister smoke, thoroughly enjoying his unspeakable brutality. It was his fifth killer role - far outnumbering his comedy appearances thus far.

. Starsky And Hutch was a big success, but its box office take paled beside that of Vaughn's next outing. This was in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, again starring Stiller. Here Vaughn would play the mightily incompetent owner of a health club, a shabby but homely joint with a wacky clientele. Across the road, Stiller opens a huge health emporium and wants to turn Vaughn's place into a car park, a desperate Vaughn deciding to enter a team into the World Series of dodgeball in the hope of winning $50,000 and saving his business. Cue Rip Torn's crippled coach, a crazed training schedule and some big belly laughs, with Vaughn playing it straight and thus providing balance for his nutty team-mates and Stiller's wild overacting.

Another big hit would be Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy, a Seventies-set piece where Will Ferrell played a big-shot San Diego newscaster whose macho sensibilities are violated by the arrival of new presenter Christina Applegate. Much of the humour was crude but the film was consistently amusing nonetheless, particularly in its set-pieces, one of which saw Ferrell's team literally fighting it out with rival newsman Vaughn and his back-room boys in a take-off of Martin Scorsese's remorselessly bloody Gangs Of New York.

By 2005, Vaughn was in high demand. He began the year with the resolutely indie Thumbsucker where kid Lou Pucci was driven into debilitating shyness by teen angst and a problematic family life. Encouraged to open up by zen orthodontist Keanu Reeves, he's further provoked by Vaughn's unorthodox debating coach who, once more in Swingers mode, demands that he be "a stone-faced killer". Then Vaughn and everyone else becomes uncomfortable with the animal they've helped to unleash. Following this would come another brief but telling role in Be Cool, the follow-up to Get Shorty and a second workout with John Travolta. Here Travolta would once more be gangster Chili Palmer, this time attempting to break into the music industry by taking over the contract of singer Christina Milian. Vaughn would appear as Milian's agent, an insufferable twerp with an endlessly embarrassing line in black patois and mannerisms.

Next Vaughn would hit the mainstream heights in Mr And Mrs Smith, directed by Swingers helmsman Doug Liman, where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie played a married couple, each unaware that the other is a professional assassin - unaware, that is, until they're hired to kill each other.

Vaughn would here play another killer, a wisecracking tough guy who lives with his mum and works for Pitt's agency , dispensing advice to his buddy on how to survive the deadly confusion. With Pitt and Jolie onboard, and with rumours of an affair flying, the movie was a major hit. However, Vaughn's greatest success of 2005 (actually his greatest success to date) would come when he reunited with Owen Wilson and David Dobkin, director of Clay Pigeons, for Wedding Crashers. This would see Vaughn and Wilson as buddies who, as the title suggests, spend their time gatecrashing wedding receptions, hoovering up the free food and drink and preying on the spare tottie. When they appear to hit paydirt, though, by busting into a party hosted by Treasury Secretary Christopher Walken, it all goes seriously wrong, Wilson falling for Walken's daughter Rachel McAdams and Vaughn getting involved with Isla Fisher, McAdams' insanely possessive younger sister. It was a reasonably adept comedy, with Vaughn and Wilson both on good form, but Walken was wasted and a guesting Will Ferrell was clumsy. Nevertheless, it was a surprisingly enormous hit, eventually breaking the $200 million barrier at the US box office. Vaughn was clearly now a big deal.

. 2006 would see just one Vaughn release - another big hit promoted by secretive off-screen romance. This was The Break-Up, where tour guide Vaughn, obsessed with video games and the Chicago Cubs splits from upmarket girlfriend Jennifer Aniston but, due to financial constraints, the couple must continue to live together. Bad advice would be provided by respective best friends (and former Vaughn co-stars) Jon Favreau and Joey Lauren Adams and the couple's sadistic attempts to make each other jealous would lead to several big laughs. However, the main interest in the film stemmed from Vaughn's real-life relationship with Aniston. Aniston had now split from husband Brad Pitt who'd leapt directly into the arms of Angelina Jolie (though nothing had happened on the set of Mr And Mrs Smith, he insisted, nothing at all, honest). Vaughn at first appeared to be a shoulder for Aniston to cry on but, despite their efforts to keep their romance private, it soon became apparent that there was more going on. The tabloids were very keen to find out - Vaughn and Aniston of course would form perhaps the most popular couple in recent Hollywood history.

With anothet $100 million hit under his belt, Vaughn took the chance to return to basics, organising his own Wild West Comedy Show. For this he chose four of his favourite comics from the Comedy Store and took off across America, playing 30 different cities in 30 days. In the spirit of Old West variety shows, Vaughn would be an extrovert MC, performing improv sketches with guest celebrities, often taking the rise out of his own films. He'd had the idea when putting on a charity show in a New Orleans bar while filming Wedding Crashers.

Despite all this, and his blossoming relationhip with Aniston, there were black moments. One would involve his mother Sharon and her Directors Financial Group, a riotously successful hedge-fund she ran from home. At its peak, in June 2005, the fund dealt with $28 million from 29 separate investors, but problems arrived when Sharon was offered an investment that, it was claimed, would generate 10% a month as well as extra funds earmarked for charities. To most it would sound too good to be true but Sharon didn't think so and was righteously burned when the scheme was revealed to be a scam. Consequently, in March 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against her, claiming she'd failed to properly invest her clients' money and made material misrepresentations to them. Though she'd aid the authorities in their investigation and even wear a wire when introducing the Secret Service to one of the alleged perpetrators, she was ordered to surrender profits of $808,820 and banned from associating with any investment adviser or broker. Fortunately, $21 million was quickly recovered and returned to her investors. The $2 million Sharon herself had put into the venture, though, would be the final pay-out, if it was ever repaid.

. 2007 would see Sharon Vaughn's only son move ever deeper into "serious" acting when he scored a main part in Sean Penn's Into The Wild. This was based on the true story of Chris McCandless, a bright, well-to-do kid who gave up a college education in order to experience a life of freedom in the Alaskan wilderness, only to die in an abandoned bus, a naive victim of his own lack of knowledge and preparation. Emile Hirsch would play the idealistic McCandless, with Vaughn as Wayne Westerberg, the charming grain harvester who befriended McCandless, gave him a job in Carthage, South Dakota, and received regular updates as the kid crossed America towards his grisly fate.

Having been so hot after Swingers, then having stepped (or been pushed) away, Vince Vaughn is now back on the up. He's found an enviable balance between thespianism, comedy and live improv and will surely continue to follow all three paths - as you'd expect from a man who claims to be equally influenced by Spencer Tracy and Gene Wilder. Expect more, much more.

Dominic Wills