Photo: Courtesy of Rolling Stone. Jon Snow can now add Rolling Stone cover boy to a list of accomplishments that includes scaling the wall and bedding a Wildling. In its latest issue, the magazine does a Game of Thrones deep dive that features interviews with writer George R.R. Martin and Snow's real-life counterpart Kit Harington.
Over the course of four seasons, Game of Thrones has become one of the most talked about shows on television, and Harington has joined fellow Brit Emilia Clarke as the undisputed breakout stars. In one of his most extensive interviews yet, the 27-year-old thesp reveals that he has a lot more in common with his headstrong character than we think. "He's driven by ambition," Harington says. "I've always been ambitious too. But, how do I balance that with not fucking other people up around me?
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Harington also discusses the one thing that strikes fear in the hearts of every actor who plays an iconic character on a beloved TV show: typecasting. "I told my agent, 'No more swords, no more horses,'" he admits. "You [don't want to] get stuck in things. And, maybe I can cut my fucking hair." While his first feature film, the swords-and-sandals epic Pompeii, didn't stray too far from the world of Westeros, Harington is already well on his way to career diversification thanks to a number of big-screen roles on the horizon, including the lead in the upcoming WWI coming-of-age drama Testament of Youth, opposite Hayley Atwell and Emily Watson.
As for the man behind the books that made Harington a household name, well he too used real life experiences to help inform his work. "To get to my school, I had to walk past the house where my mother had been born, this house that had been our house once," Martin tells the magazine. "In some of my stories, there's this sense of a lost golden age, where there were wonders and marvels undreamed of. Somehow what my mother told me set all that stuff into my imagination."
Does anybody have Mr. Martin's mom's contact info? We'd like to send her all the thank you notes. The new issue of Rolling Stone hits newsstands April 25. (Rolling Stone)