Matt Smith has become one of the most renowned English actors on TV after rising to prominence in the 2010s. Smith played the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor in the BBC’s long-running sci-fi programme before portraying Prince Philip in Netflix’s The Crown, a royal performance which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
However, things could have turned out so differently had the stars aligned for the now-39-year-old. Before embarking on his acting career, Smith had aspirations to be a professional footballer.
Any chances of making the cut were ultimately scuppered by a back condition known as spondylosis. This led to him being released by Leicester City at the age of 16, at which point his acting venture truly began.
Read more: Who is Emma D'Arcy and who does she play in House of The Dragon?
Football had run in Matt Smith’s family after his grandfather played for Notts County. The former BAFTA nominee, and winner of a National Television Award, hoped to follow suit having played for the youth teams of Northampton Town and Nottingham Forest, before joining Leicester City.
Smith even became captain of the Foxes’ youth team before being diagnosed with Spondylosis. The condition generally refers to some kind of age-related degeneration in the spine, such as abnormal overgrowth of bones or dry and cracked discs.
Spondylosis is caused by wear and tear on the components of the spine. By age 60, most people will show signs of the condition on x-ray.
Speaking to Kirsty Young on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Smith said: “It was a tough time because I just felt unfulfilled, to be honest, I felt like I was so certain that that is what I was going to do. It was very difficult for me to tell people that I had been released because the vain part of me was like, I am that and I am the footballer, you know, and at school I was the footballer and suddenly I wasn’t that.
“Fortuitously there was a drama teacher, Terry Hardingham, who said, ‘you were never meant to be a footballer, I always thought you were really great at acting’," and Smith never looked back.
Who does Matt Smith play in House of the Dragon?
Matt Smith portrays Daemon Targaryen in the upcoming House of the Dragon series. Set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, the character was the most experienced warrior of his time, wielding the Valyrian steel blade Dark Sister.
The dragonrider declared himself the King of the Stepstones and the Narrow Sea. Daemon is described as an “unpredictable and impulsive rogue” by Game of Thrones Wiki.
House of the Dragon gets underway tonight - at 2am on Sky Atlantic - with the subsequent nine episodes airing weekly early on Monday mornings.
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