Friends of actor and former footballer Vinnie Jones have remarked that after finding love again, ‘the light is back in his eyes’.
Vinnie, 59, who played over 500 professional matches and won the FA Cup during his career, lost his wife Tanya Jones (née Terry) in 2019 at the age of 53 following a lengthy battle with cancer.
And the Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels actor has talked frankly about his sadness, confessing halfway through last year that his’spirit [was] broken’ and characterising grief as a ‘ghost’.
However, people close to Vinnie believe that the hardman actor is beginning to show signs of moving on, with a fresh new girlfriend, Emma Ford, reportedly raising his spirits in recent months.
‘Vinnie and Emma’s relationship was very organic and started as purely a working friendship before it developed into something more,’ a source told The Sun.
They continued: ‘Emma has brought the light back into Vinnie’s eyes and she clearly makes him very happy. They are a great match and everyone who knows them was thrilled when they became a couple.’
Emma is said to be Vinnie’s personal assistant, and that their relationship blossomed while The Gentlemen actor was filming Vinnie Jones in the Country in 2022.
Last month, Vinnie himself told GQ that Emma had ‘calmed [him] down a bit’, and that ‘maybe she brings a different perspective to it all for me’.
He’s also told The Mirror that he’s now finally ‘moving forward’ with his life, explaining his current situation: ‘Moving forwards, we meet other people that we are fond of and we fall in love with and vice versa.’
A former model, Emma, 46, later moved into acting and presenting, and became a script editor and producer, working for members of popular rock bands such as The Clash.
She co-starred with Vinnie in the Discovery Plus series, although she had previously been on Black Mirror and in films such as The Magic Door, Solitary, and The Baby Juice Express.
Vinnie told Piers Morgan‘s Life Stories four years ago, in September 2020, that he had no intentions to remarry in the near future since Tanya passed away.
The couple was together for 27 years, married for 25, and had one kid during that period, Aaron, who is now 33. Vinnie became stepfather to Terry’s 37-year-old daughter, Kaley, from a previous relationship.
This recent breakthrough is a huge step forward in Vinnie’s mourning journey, demonstrating his improvement over the previous five years.
During the Covid lockdown, Vinnie disclosed that he had been seeing a therapist to help him cope, revealing that, while he believed he was doing well, he was actually struggling more than he realised.
‘‘I’m seeing someone three times a week. I thought I was doing okay, and then the anniversaries of Tans’s death and our daughter Kaley’s birthday were approaching and it was like somebody just drained the life out of me,’ he said.
