Kit Harington would sometimes look at himself in the mirror with such self-loathing that he’d call himself vitriolic names.
He was at the height of his fame, having earned a huge following for his portrayal of Game of Thrones heart-throb Jon Snow, a role he played from 2011 to 2019, but the happy-go-lucky Brit the world saw walking red carpets and participating in engaging and playful interviews was merely a character he’d created.
Behind closed doors, he was a shell of himself, self-medicating with alcohol.
(Credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)
“I’d hate myself. I would literally despise myself and not be proud of anything I’d done. I couldn’t be proud,” he admitted to GQ in what is possibly the most revealing interview of his career.
By the time Game of Thrones’ final season was being broadcast, Harington was in rehab. Now, in 2024, he couldn’t be further from those days of torment.
“The fact that I am proud of getting sober is in and of itself a mark of being an entirely different person,” he shared.
“And now, every set I step onto, whatever work I do, I’m proud of, because I know I put everything into it. Whereas before I had this huge monkey on my back that was just, like, weighing me down. So yeah, the whole nature of being proud of myself is a relatively new prospect for me.”
It doesn’t mean he’s not human – the possibility of relapsing does haunt him. “I might have one massive, messy, chaotic relapse, and I hope that doesn’t happen, but I think I protect myself by talking about it,” the 37-year-old explained.
Another way of protecting himself is to surround himself with the best possible support system, which includes his Game of Thrones co-star-turned-wife, Rose Leslie, 37, who he married in 2018. They share two young children.
“Everything before kids is research,” he told GQ, confirming he’s not the 20-something party boy anymore.
As he approaches 40, he’s a family man relishing his sobriety.
“It does just change everything,” he said of being a dad. “I think, at heart – and I say this with love for myself – I’m quite self-centred. I think I’m a generous person and a loving person [too]. But with kids, you just don’t get to be self-centred. They strip you of it. And that’s an amazing gift.
“[Kids] are ultimately completely self-centred. They don’t think about anyone else but themselves. So your self-centredness just has to park itself. And I think it’s the great thing about parenting. At the heart of it, it’s the most selfless thing you can do.”
Being a dad is something Harington might not have seen on his horizon given his demons. “I was so lucky I got sober before having kids,” he told the publication, because back then it felt “physically and emotionally impossible for me not to drink again”.
Returning to the spotlight after being relatively quiet the past five years, Harington is back on our screens in the third season of sexy banking drama Industry.
The series follows a group of finance graduates navigating their careers and personal lives as they put in long hours at a prestigious investment bank in London. In the series, the British actor plays Sir Henry Muck, the uber wealthy CEO of a green-tech energy company. Muck is a man with taboo bedroom kinks and power.
He is also a character who spends quite a bit of time in the buff. “I go to the gym for my head anyway. But when I knew I was getting my bum out, I was like, ‘OK, you’re on the squats this week.’”
There’s no doubt Harington’s fans from his days on Game on Thrones will likely follow him to this part in Industry, and the actor seems to welcome the opportunity to be seen as more than just Jon Snow.
“The role [of Jon] will always be just such a significant factor of my life,” Harington told GQ, suggesting he’d like to put Snow to bed and herald in a new age with Muck.
But that doesn’t mean he looks back at the gruesome fantasy drama with a chip on his shoulder.
“It might very well be the biggest, most important piece of work I do. I met my wife on it. I have kids from it. Have some lifelong friends from it. I’m recognised in the street because of it.”
At the same time, he said, “It was also working against what I’m trying to do, which is separate myself from [the show]. By still being with it, it [would be] very hard to ask people to see you as something else.”
Harington had been set to reprise the role in 2024, but his new admission might be part of the reason why the highly anticipated Snow spin-off was cancelled. In April, Harington confirmed the news via Entertainment Weekly, two years after Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin told other media Harington had originally approached him with the idea of a Snow sequel – an idea he loved and wanted to move forward with.
“We bounced some ideas around and nothing really lit us up. It just didn’t. I think we don’t want to do something that’s not worth it,” Harington told EW, devastating fans of Martin’s books and shows.
With his new role in Industry allowing him to add another dimension to his body of work and a much healthier approach to life, Harington has finally realised that the hype around him is warranted.
“I’ve been around for a while,” he told GQ. “And I’m still working. And so at some point, I have to accept that might have something to do with my talent as well.”
