something which is new and bold and dangerous,
you risk going too far.
You know, I was always around rugby.
I was playing at quite a high level.
I can’t stand watching Thrones and knowing it’s a stuntman
that’s doing my bit, so anytime,
you know, I can, I want to do the stunt.
I had been in a fight the night before.
I’d gotten in this fight with this guy in McDonald’s.
– What’s up, Believe Nation?
It’s Evan, my one word is believe,
and I believe that you have the ability
to do something special that can change the planet.
To help you on your journey,
today we’re going to learn from one of the
highest paid actors on TV, Kit Harrington,
and my take on his top 10 rules of success.
Rule number one is my personal favorite,
and I’d love to know which one
you guys like the best.
(upbeat music)
– I think unless we are
pushing the boundaries of what we are comfortable viewing,
we’re not making art,
and I think that’s why Game of Thrones is,
people have responded so,
so much to Game of Thrones, is that they,
they’re watching something which shocks them,
which moves them, which makes them scared or angry.
I think the thing that you risk is you can,
when you’re trying to make
something which is new and bold and dangerous,
you risk going too far.
You’re always going to take that risk.
In Thrones, I think we have gone too far at times,
and in Doctor Faustus, we definitely did.
It didn’t work in some ways because it was too much.
But I think unless you try, you’re not pushing boundaries.
You’re not making art.
I had a few moments during Game of Thrones
where you’re very into it and very
kind of concentrating on what you’re doing
and constantly trying to improve
and get it better and better.
Every now and again, you have a moment.
I had a couple where
it was just on set in this cloak with this sword
and this amazing castle that they built.
You just kind of go this is really cool.
This is just cool,
and this is what I became an actor to do,
is to live this kind of world.
It’s every young actor’s dream
to play those parts where you’re a badass sword fighter.
– [Interviewer] Well you see, and if the kids dream.
– Yeah!
Yeah, I’ve read the books.
The minute I got the part,
I went and bought all of them and read them,
mainly out of curiosity about what might be happening.
Also, out of I felt I had a source material there.
Whenever I’ve got a source material,
I feel that it, for me anyway,
I need to look at all information
I can gather about that fictional character.
The first description,
if you read the first description of Jon,
it informed, I think I, I think I, for my audition,
I bought the book, read the first description of Jon,
read a bit to get an idea of it,
and then went in with that.
It’s already in the book that he’s quiet,
he’s quite sort of
dower in a way.
He’s like the black sheep in the family.
When that first paragraph about who he was
and what his sort of essence was like,
gave me that first sort of tap into how I should,
how I should do that first audition.
Then that template stays with you
for six years of what character you’ve made.
That’s the way I,
if I have something like that to go on,
the way I work.
I’ll look at exactly what the writer or these writers
or the writer of the book thinks this person is
and try and tell that story.
– Did you ever try your hand at football?
– I was a rugby player when I was young.
– Rugby?
– Yeah, I was a scrum-half.
A scrum-half’s the little guy.
He’s the smallest guy on the rugby team.
Scrappy, yeah, he’s hard to catch.
He takes the ball out of the scrum-half
and he gets it’s out to the backs.
The back line, you might say.
– [Rich] So did you realize early on
that perhaps acting was the better way for you to go?
Is that what you’re saying?
– I remember the tackle that did it, yeah.
– What was that?
– You know, I was around rugby.
I was playing at quite a high level,
but there’s something that happens to young men
when they go from being 16, 17, years old
to suddenly, I was playing at 18 years old.
You know when young men go from being young men to men.
I remember the time I got hit with a tackle.
I was in the drama society at the same time
as being on the rugby team.
I thought, “I got to protect this.”
– [Rich] The money maker.
– Got to protect the money maker.
One more hit like that to my face,
I can kiss acting goodbye.
– How physically demanding is your role on the show,
and how has it differed from other roles?
You do your own stunts.
Do you do your own stunts?
– Yeah, I do.
– [Interviewer] Have you ever gotten hurt?
– Yeah, you get knocks and bruises, nothing major.
You have to have physio–
– [Interviewer] You’ve never broken your nose or anything?
– No, no, not the nose, darling.
– [Interviewer] (laughs)
Watch the face, watch the face!
– Watch the face.
No, I, knocks and bruises.
I’ve done far worst things to myself on my own time.
I like doing it.
I can’t stand watching Thrones and knowing it’s a stuntman
that’s doing my bit, so anytime,
you know, I can, I want to do the stunt.
Every now and again, it has to be a stuntman,
but usually, it’s me.
Usually, it’s me.
– I imagine it’s kind of terrifying, I imagine.
Acting on stage in front of an audience every single night.
– It is, but that’s the reason,
I think, any actor gets into it,
or any actor who starts on the stage, especially.
You get into it for that kind
of thrill-seeking reason in some ways,
the adrenaline rush.
I love it.
I forgot what live performance was for a while
and now I’m really enjoying it.
– This particularly,
this role in Pompeii was hard right, physically tough?
– Yeah, I mean, when I got into it, I sort of,
I looked at it and knew I was playing a gladiator.
I thought I better look like a gladiator, right?
I said to the director,
“I would really like do kind of a
“body transformation thing for this.
“It’s something that I’ve wanted to do
“for awhile for a part.”
– Like the Quick Trim 50-day challenge
or something like that or more of a gym thing?
– I wanted to, you know,
if you do some research about gladiators,
they did look like…
– [Kyle] Monsters?
They’re huge, right?
– Huge, very, very cut, very, very, chiseled.
– How long did you have to transform your body that way?
– I had about five weeks.
– [Jackie] Ooh, that’s not long.
– It’s not long.
– [Jackie] What was involved then?
– I wouldn’t be able to lose one kilo in five weeks.
– I put on 10 kilos
in five, in four weeks,
and then I had to in another three weeks,
I had to, while we started filming the film,
I had to cut down those 10 kilos again.
So, I put on 10 kilos and then lost 10 kilos.
By that time, you keep all the muscle,
but you just sort of, um…
– You carve yourself up.
You look like a gladiator.
– And when you’re doing those fight scenes,
which would be pretty intense,
how long is the filming on those?
– Long.
– Long?
– Long, yeah it’s–
– It’s hours.
– If you’re not doing the fight scenes, filming them,
you’re in a room training for the next one.
The director we have, Paul, the director, he basically
said, he would come in
and we’d have choreographed about 10 fights,
you know, to show him.
Then he’d come in and say, “No, I don’t like any of those.”
When they’ve taken you like five weeks to learn.
– And you’re like, Jesus.
– He said that that’s not, I don’t like that one.
I don’t like that.
So, you’d have to go and relearn a whole bit.
By the end of it, you can pick up a fight pretty quickly.
– Do you worry that you’ll get typecasted
with the Game of Thrones, you know what I mean?
‘Cause it is, I mean,
the cast is so imprinted on everyone’s imagination
that people thing you are Jon Snow.
– There is that worry.
There is that idea,
will I ever break away from this character?
When I wanted to get into acting, I wanted to just work.
I wanted to work as an actor to do,
to act.
It’s just is an honor in itself.
This enables me to do that.
This may be a defining role for me,
but it’s going to allow me to do lots of other things.
I don’t worry about that typecasting issue.
I always think people,
other people worry about it too much for me.
I’m like, I don’t, I don’t see it as a problem.
– The first time Kit walked into the room,
I remember thinking, “Oh, please let this guy be good.”
I just have an image in my mind,
with most of the characters I don’t, but with Jon Snow,
I had an image in my mind of what he should,
not only what he should look like,
but more what he should kind of feel like,
a certain burning intensity and a kind of haunted thing.
(audience laughs)
So, he comes in.
– Do it, do it.
– Do blue steel.
– [Man] Blue steel.
Brood steel.
– That was just definitely something else.
– He came in and he nailed it.
He was just, he was incredible.
(intense music)
– I’ve really admired his work.
I had seen him as Jon Snow
and I knew that this was a very different part.
He just came in, well,
we met at the reading, and he just blew me away.
He brings such, you know,
a strong heart and intelligent performance
and yet, very sensitive.
– It’s nice when you get to work with a friend,
and you know, and it actually works,
’cause the other way is not fun.
I’ve had a scene I had to play.
Sorry, one second.
I think probably,
it was probably the,
there was this scene.
Okay, so it…
It was the scene with um…
When
Ygritte dies.
It was so sad.
We had three weeks of night shoots,
so everyone was very emotional anyway.
The scene where
I turn around and she’s there with the arrow.
It was this moment of like,
well, it’s funny.
I turned around and smiled because,
I didn’t mean to, I just did.
Then that seemed to work, so we kept it in.
(breathes heavily)
(sorrowful music)
(gurgles)
– Jon Snow.
– Hush.
Don’t talk.
(sorrowful music)
– You remember that cave?
We should have stayed in that cave.
– We’ll go back there.
– You know nothing, Jon Snow.
– Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because Ivan on my team asked me too.
Ivan does most of the research behind all of these videos,
so I had to do him a solid and make this video.
If there’s someone you’d like
to vote on for the next Top 10,
check out the link in the description,
and go and have your say.
Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to BestYouPro.
Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book,
Your One Word,
and taking that amazing picture
of you on the beach reading it.
I’m so glad you enjoyed the book,
and I really appreciate your support.
Thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself,
and whatever your one word is, much love.
I’ll see you soon.
– I’m playing a cowboy at the moment.
I’ve got to do loads of things that kids do,
like I got to be a medieval warrior.
I got to be a cowboy.
I’ve been a spy.
I’ve been a gladiator.
I’ve got to play around, man.
It was a lot of fun.
– I do remember the audition for Jon Snow.
I had a black eye.
I’d been in a if hgt the night before.
I’d gotten in this fight with this guy in McDonald’s.
I went into the McDonald’s
with this girl I was sort of dating at the time.
It was late at night, and there was no seats.
I asked this,
this guy and this girl
he was with if we could sit on the same table
as them and they said yes.
We sat down.
Quite quickly, he started being really rude
to the girl I was with, calling her names.
We were like, we’ll just finish our food,
we don’t need trouble, and then go.
Then he called her something like
an ugly pig or something worse.
I got up and said, “No, no, no, you can’t.
“You can’t call her that.
“Get up.”
So I called him out for a fight,
which I’ve never done before.
Of course, he’d been sat down the whole time.
He got up and he just kept going.
I just realized
that I had to, at that point, throw the first punch.
Otherwise, I’d look like a complete wimp.
I got battered.
Then, I went to the Jon Snow audition with a black eye,
which I think that man who punched me in the face
may have helped me get the job,
so if you’re watching, thank you.
Very soon after the,
the show had aired, and I was dead.
There was a lot of questions about whether I’d come back,
and that cliffhanger had just started.
The policeman pulled me over
for speeding.
I got pulled over and he said,
“We can take you into the office
“and we can give you a fine and give you points
“or you can tell me whether you live
“in the next season of Game of Thrones.”
– [Interviewer] Oh my gosh.
– I know.
– [Interviewer] How outrageous.
– And I thought, you know, this is a joke.
This must be a joke and he was deadly serious.
I said, “Well, I’m,
“I’m alive.”
Then he says, “On your way, Lord Commander.”
– No way.
– It was just fantastic, isn’t it?
I love that police officer.
The only thing better than being alive in reality
is being alive fictionally as well.
We did thousands upon thousands of takes
’cause it’s such a key moment, I think,
of me going (gasps) like that,
that they wanted that over and over again.
I had to kind of say I don’t know how else to do it now, guys.
It feels like I was lying down
for so many hours for two whole episodes.
I remember I fell asleep
in the middle of a scene and woke up.
You know when you wake up
and you don’t know quite where you are?
There’s nothing scarier than waking up
in the middle of Game of Thrones world
naked and everyone standing over you.
I think oh my God,
I’ve died and I actually ended up in Westeros.
– [Interviewer] Can you speak a little about the journey
that you’ve been on with Jon Snow throughout these seasons?
– Wow, it’s um,
it’s been an incredible journey.
It’s been a journey all through my twenties,
all through his twenties.
We’ve sort of grown up together.
It’ll be very hard letting someone like that go.
I’ll always have an affinity with him.
I’ve loved him.
I love playing him.
I love being part of the series.
It’s something that will be
one of the most significant things in my entire life.
I’ll miss the camaraderie.
I’ll miss the going back,
like an office job that’s the best office in the world,
once every six months.
I really will miss that.
I’ll miss the crew.
I’ll miss everyone who works on the show.
Yeah, that’ll be hard.
”
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