Statham looks up to Stallone

Jason Statham feels "privileged" to know Sylvester Stallone.

The action star first worked with the iconic actor-and-director in 2010 movie The Expendables, followed by a sequel and an upcoming third instalment.

Since then the paired have remained close friends and Jason was offered a role in Sylvester-written movie Homefront.

The 46-year-old star was thrilled to have been approached for the project and grateful to play a different type of character.

"I grew up on Stallone. It's one of the biggest privileges you can get, for an actor where I'm at, to get a hand-delivered script for something he wrote for himself. This was something he was gonna do, and thank God, for me, that things changed for him. He got a little distracted, otherwise this wouldn't be around," Jason told denofgeek.com.

"He did a couple of other things and this one stayed on the shelf, so Sly was always talking about, I should do something that shows a little bit of a different side. He said, 'I've got a script, there's a relationship with the daughter' and he said, 'It'd be really good for you.' Little did I know I'd end up doing it. It was a massive opportunity for me."

Another reason why Jason was attracted to the feature was because of his A-list co-stars.

The story follows former DEA agent Phil Broker (Jason), who encounters a local drug lord (James Franco) after his family move to a small town.

"All the characters in it have a great thing to do. Having a great script like that you get the attraction of people like James Franco and Winona Rider and Kate Bosworth, because there's good parts for everybody, rather than there just being a couple of decent roles and the rest no good," Jason added.