This is perhaps the first interview with Kit Harington that I’ve ever read where he doesn’t throw in some tedious complaint about how he’s too beautiful and people need to stop talking about what a hunk he is. Thank god, maturity. Kit covers the latest issue of Variety and it’s actually a pretty good read – he’s reflective and mature and pretty honest about where he sees his career prospects now that he’s done with Game of Thrones. Of course, he also spends a lot of time talking about his hair, but it’s not that bad. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

On his Jon Snow hair: “For any other job I’ve had up until now, there’s a contractual element over me that I have to return to ‘Thrones’ with a similar look. I can’t tell you the amount of conversations I’ve had with agents about whether my hair’s going to grow back in time. A huge part of my 20s are me with that look. My wedding pictures [with former co-star and now-wife Rose Leslie] are me with that look. For a long time toward the end of ‘Thrones,’ I felt like I wanted to be a new person but I was stuck in this shape.”

On the last season of GoT: “They went balls out, I think is the term. They could have easily set the same budget as they did for Season 7, but they went bigger.”

He stopped reading reviews around Season 3: “My memory is always ‘the boring Jon Snow.’ And that got to me after a while, because I was like, ‘I love him. He’s mine and I love playing him.’ Some of those words that were said about it stuck in my craw about him being less entertaining, less showy.”

The success of GoT brought personal troubles: “It wasn’t a very good time in my life. I felt I had to feel that I was the most fortunate person in the world, when actually, I felt very vulnerable. I had a shaky time in my life around there — like I think a lot of people do in their 20s. That was a time when I started therapy, and started talking to people. I had felt very unsafe, and I wasn’t talking to anyone. I had to feel very grateful for what I have, but I felt incredibly concerned about whether I could even f—ing act.”

He’s a neurotic British bloke: Harington describes himself as “awkward and English. I’m not going to come out and go” — here he feigns an American accent a bit like the one he does in “True West” — “‘Hey guys, how you doing!’ I am just a bloke and not one who is particularly good at a lot of attention.”

His future career: “Right now I would expect Aaron Taylor-Johnson to be sent a more interesting, darker, more characterful role than I would. I have to get myself to a point where I can prove to people that I can do those. I have to graft myself out of being a heroic TV actor, and that’s a challenge, and that’s fine.”

He wants to model his career on someone like Benedict Cumberbatch: “I don’t want to be Bruce Willis and be an action hero but I think those days are sort of done anyway. The sort of ideal for an actor seems to be nowadays, ‘Oh, I’ll do this Marvel franchise, and I’ll have this time after to do my fun stuff.’ I’ve had that with ‘Thrones,’ and I wouldn’t mind continuing that.”

[From Variety]

Here’s my bold opinion: most British actors are the same. They are all sort of neurotic and they all struggle with fame in similar ways, and they all get plenty of opportunities to avoid typecasting. Have you noticed that? British actors just work. They work all the time, in TV, films and theatre and they don’t really think of it as “no, I can only do two films a year and I have to pace my career this way.” So, yeah, Kit will be fine. He’ll have a few years where he won’t like any of the scripts he’s sent and he’ll do lots of theatre work and then he’ll find a good script for a BBC production or something and he’ll just keep on working and working.

Photos courtesy of WENN, cover courtesy of Variety.