Matt Smith enjoyed playing ‘sleazy’ Last Night in Soho role: ‘He frightens me’

Matt Smith took the role and ran with it (Picture: Focus Features/Planet Photos)

Matt Smith is talking about the sheer bizarreness of being famous. Even after being in the public eye for a decade, as he’s gone from playing Doctor Who to Prince Philip in The Crown, it’s still hard to get his head around.

‘I saw myself on a bus once and it drove past… and I said, “Is that my face?” I was with my mate in New York and he replied, “Were you on a bus?” I couldn’t really compute it,’ Smith admits.

Sporting a pair of John Lennon-style sunglasses, the shy star is sitting on the terrace of the Excelsior Hotel, midway through the Venice Film Festival.

His new film, psychological thriller Last Night In Soho, premiered in Venice with his face plastered on a lot more than just a double-decker.

Dressed in a Giorgio Armani dinner suit, he was accompanied by his co-star, Anya Taylor-Joy of The Queen’s Gambit, as she rocked a pink satin Dior gown.

Fame is also the name of the game in Last Night In Soho, directed and co-written by Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead), as would-be fashion student and 1960s-obsessed Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is spirited back to her favourite decade and encounters Taylor-Joy’s singer Sandie and her sleazy manager Jack (Smith) in the Café de Paris.

Smiths stars alongside Anya Taylor-Joy (Picture: Focus Features/PLANET PHOTOS)

To prep, Smith studied the legendary Oliver Reed. He also listened to the vocals
of Pete Townshend, guitarist from The Who, and watched Ken Loach’s working-class drama Poor Cow to look at a young Terence Stamp, who here turns up as a seedy Soho denizen. On set, Smith repeated one of Stamp’s lines from Poor Cow – ‘you can eat your dinner off my back’ – over and over to help him get into the zone.

The film also reunited Smith with Diana Rigg – another 1960s icon in a film full of them – in what was her final performance before she passed away last year, aged 82. She plays Eloise’s landlady.

‘It’s a wonderful performance,’ he comments. ‘I’d worked with Diana on Doctor Who so I know her. I love her. It’s such a sad loss, isn’t it?’

The nasty Jack marks another disturbing character in Smith’s off-kilter CV. He’s already played cult leader/killer Charles Manson in movie Charlie Says and Brett Easton Ellis’s serial killer Patrick Bateman in a stage musical version of American Psycho.

Last Night in Soho was Diana Rigg’s last movie (Picture: Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features)

‘I’ve always tried to choose projects that frighten me a bit, to be honest with you… that feel out of my wheelhouse. He’s up there [in his pantheon of villains],’ he says. ‘He’s up there, Jack.’

Well-mannered and slightly shy, Smith is far from these extreme characters. Raised in Northampton, he wanted to be a Premier League footballer when he was young but was released by Leicester City at 16 due to suffering from spondylosis, a back condition that ended his chances of playing the beautiful game.

‘I’d much rather be a footballer!’ he sighs. ‘Even if you’re the greatest rock star on this planet, part of you wants to be a maths teacher. And it speaks to the film a bit – you’re always yearning for something other.’

Fortunately, his teacher encouraged him to act and, after studying drama and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, he began performing in the West End in shows such as The History Boys in the early 2000s.

More: Matt Smith

Things really turned in 2010 when he became the youngest actor to ever play Doctor Who – he was 26 when he signed on. The love for the show remains intense, with fans even tattooing his face on their body.

‘You’re part of a weird club,’ grins Smith, who turns 39 today.

Talking of crazy fandom – and one that’s bound to see him plastered on even more buses – he’s next up in House Of The Dragon, the Game Of Thrones prequel, as Daemon Targaryen.

It’s a show that’s shrouded in huge secrecy. He’s just happy to be doing something different yet again.

‘My ambition is to stay connected and alive to the whole process,’ he says, ‘because it’s a long old road being an actor.’

Last Night In Soho is in cinemas from this Friday

MORE : Last Night In Soho director Edgar Wright reveals late Diana Rigg’s final role will always be ‘special’

MORE : Last Night in Soho stars on their connections with film’s ‘real deal’ swinging sixties London