My life as Mr Madonna

Guy Ritchie isn't acting like a man whose latest film has been so badly reviewed that cinemas across America are planning to withdraw it just a few days after it was released. Nor does he seem flustered by recent reports that his marriage to its star, Madonna, is in difficulty. Indeed, the ordinary British bloke who married the most famous - and some might say, most difficult - icon on the planet seems relaxed and surprisingly open when we meet in Beverly Hills.

''What's the obsession with slagging people off ? Why all the negativity? The secret, I find, is to pretty much ignore all the stuff they say and write about you. I think my wife and I feel as though we've enriched one another's lives enormously, in all sorts of ways."

The maverick British film director is in characteristic bullish mood, pouring scorn on the endless stream of gossip and innuendo that has been heaped on his relationship with Madonna since they met five years ago.

"Well, I didn't go into this relationship blind. I knew there would be a certain amount of rumours, but curiously, the bad stuff turned out to be the good stuff, because if people write about you and your relationship for long enough, then it starts off this chain reaction that forces you into asking questions about everything, where you're going in life, what you want from it.''

Cynics will argue that such a positive - or naive - outlook is crucial as he endures a series of interviews to promote the "troubled" movie, Swept Away. After speculation that it would go straight to video, the film, which suffered months of edits to tone down the sex and violence, finally opened last week to a cacophony of unanimously bad reviews - including being described as "tawdry", "boring" and "laugh-able". The film is due to be released over here later this year.

There has been a lot riding on the movie. For Ritchie, who made his name with London-based gangster films, branching out to do a romantic comedy (albeit a dark one) was a chance to show that he could handle any genre. Such an embarrassing failure has, for the time being, put the brakes on his being thrust into the major Hollywood league.

Madonna, too, needed a hit. She may have been voted the greatest female singer of all time, but as an actress she has failed to live up to her quirky promise in Desperately Seeking Susan 17 years ago, giving lame performances in a series of "turkeys". Her performance in Swept Away as a rich, arrogant American who is shipwrecked on an island and beaten up by a resentful lover, has been widely lambasted - reviews that Ritchie refuses to allude to. Add to this the gossip that their two-year marriage is suffering under the weight of expectation - there were allegedly volatile scenes on the set and just months ago, Ritchie was photographed storming out of San Lorenzo, followed by his red-eyed wife - and it is perhaps surprising to find him in such a laidback mood. But, then, this is the man who tamed Madonna.

When he bounces into the room, all boyish enthusiasm and mockney vowels, dressed in a grey fleece, worn jeans and trainers, he's casually munching on a chocolate bar. His wife, daughter Lourdes, six, and their two-year-old son Rocco are back in London. Ritchie is soon recalling the film shoot last year, and grins as he admits: "I'm sure we had one or two fights, but nothing out of the ordinary." In a fit of jealousy, the stories go, Ritchie directed the sex scenes between his wife and her handsome co-star Adriano Giannini, sitting about three feet away, wielding a "very sharp stick".

Even Madonna was quoted earlier this year as saying: "We were all intimidated. We were terrified. The whole thing was weird because, after all, he's my husband and he's the only person I make love to."

In Ritchie's heavily re-edited film, there is less sex and nudity than in the original 1974 Italian version of the story. "It wasn't so much down to any sort of jealously," insists Ritchie, "my film just didn't warrant so much explicit sex.

"They do spend quite a lot of time without their clothes on, but yeah, it is my wife up there. There's not a lot of banging going on, but who cares? I've always been bored by sex films. To be honest, I was a little uncomfortable-seeing her do sex scenes. I'm not really into filming simulated penetration and nipple-sucking."

He admits too, that he agreed to tone down the more disturbing scenes, where Madonna is hit by Adriano. "Our version isn't as hardcore as the original. At the testscreening people were so upset by the violence - the slapping - because it was against a woman. They just wouldn't stomach it.

"It's weird how you can wipe out half of Brooklyn or Somalia and kill thousands of people and it's no big deal. But you slap a woman and everyone's outraged. My previous two films were quite violent, but no one really cared."

When the idea first came up of them making a film together, Ritchie concedes he was reluctant because "Madonna comes with all this baggage. But that's why this role seemed so well suited to her, because the baggage served the purpose of the role, and it's surprising how few people have picked up on that. She's always portrayed as this demanding diva, but obviously that's not the whole person, and that's why I used the film to tweak the image.

"She's not what anyone thinks she is - she's the antithesis of her image. She's a hard-working bird, and she's no diva. But for this film I felt that all the baggage would do nothing but help us, and the segue between the diva bitch into this rather vulnerable woman was very appealing."

As for the industry talk that the Ritchies' marriage was put under enormous strain by making a film together, he insists: "No, it was a treat, a real pleasure. I'd love us to do another project together. I think that she could act any part because that's the whole point of being an actress, and I believe she's capable of that.

"In reality, how much people will accept her as playing anything is another matter. That's the only hurdle she has. It's nothing to do with ability or talent. The simple truth is that she's a real pro and I hope I am too. She doesn't mess around like some actors, and we got on very well. People say it can't be that easy, but it is."

Once the extraordinary venom directed at the film has died down, Swept Away will no doubt be seen by Ritchie as a noble failure, an attempt to restyle his somewhat monotone career. In fact, Ritchie is as adept at image manipulation and media hype as his other half. Their first meeting took place at Sting and Trudie Styler's home. Here was the strong, confident, funny, tough guy, the sort to whom Madonna felt naturally attracted. A man like her father, Tony Ciccone, or her first husband, Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn.

Ritchie could have walked straight out of one of his own movies: a cockney geezer but with an edge. Claiming to have enjoyed a misspent youth surrounded by gangster types in a seedy environment, the truth is even more unconventional. The privately-educated director is related to Sir Winston Churchill, the Duchess of York and the late Princess of Wales. His father was an advertising executive and his mother a model. They divorced and she later married a baronet, Sir Michael Leighton, on whose Loton Park estate near Shrewsbury, Ritchie spent some of his childhood.

Ritchie gradually became fascinated by the darker side of London, eventually finding a voice with his violent and comic portrayal of gangsters and hoods in the hugely successful Snatch, and Lock, Stock.

At 33, he is 11 years younger than Madonna. The age gap, he says, "is not an issue. I don't ever think about it unless someone brings it up." Madonna, too, seems happier than she has been since splitting from Penn. She's said she likes "men who stand up to me", and now uses words like "pub" and "bloke", fully embracing Englishness as if to prove her devotion to Ritchie.

Aside from their Beverly Hills home, they have a £6 million Georgian town house in west London, and last year bought Ashcombe House, a £9 million mansion set in 1,134 acres in Wiltshire, the former home of society photographer Cecil Beaton.

In London they do the showbusiness stuff a bit - they allegedly fell out one night on whether to eat at Nobu or The Ivy - and see celebrity friends including Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Sting, Trudie, Matthew Vaughn and Claudia Schiffer.

But usually, he says, their life is "just like anyone else's, except we don't go off to nine-to-five jobs. We spend time together with the kids and Madonna does her yoga and I write. We just have fun together."

They deliberately don't read newspapers or watch TV, and the wildest thing they've done recently is "go to bed about 11pm". In fact, they've been using their time together to write a series of children's books - quite a departure for the woman who released the semi-pornographic Sex book a decade ago.

"Everyone's after the wrong things in life. It may sound a bit philosophical, but what can you do? I've been through a major examination of my life over the past three or four years. Life's big and I want some answers - and I'm getting plenty. So the point was, we wanted to reflect all that to children. We've written five stories and I think they come out at Christmas."

And what next? "I'm going to make another gangster film in LA in which what appears to be up is down, and what is down is really up. Just like life.î

Right now, the Ritchies are most definitely on a critical down. The true test for the effervescent Ritchie is whether such stinging criticism so early in his career will be the spark to get him back on track. After all, it's a warning that no one can take their talent for granted.