Kit Harington

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Kit Harington was born Christopher, and he did not learn his full name until he was eleven years old. The English actor was born on the 26th of December 1986 in Acton, West London. His mother named him after the playwright Christopher Marlowe, whose first name shortens to Kit. Harington has always preferred the short form. Today that name belongs to the man best known as Jon Snow in the television series Game of Thrones. The path from a schoolboy to one of television's most recognisable faces was not a straight one. What first pulled him toward the stage? What did he do once the biggest show of its era ended? And what did the attention cost him along the way?

  23

• 2. Worcestershire Beginnings

  ›

  From 1992 to 1998, Harington attended Southfield Primary School. His father is Sir David Harington, a businessman who holds a baronetcy as the 15th baronet. His mother, Deborah Jane Catesby, is a former playwright, so the theatre was not a foreign country in his family.

  When Harington was eleven, the family moved to Worcestershire, and he went on to Chantry High School in Martley, where he stayed until 2003. Acting was not his first plan, because he originally wanted to become a journalist. Then, at fourteen, he saw a production of Waiting for Godot and became interested in performing. He took part in several school productions.

  From 2003 to 2005 he studied Drama and Theatre at Worcester Sixth Form College. In 2004, when he was seventeen, he watched Ben Whishaw play Hamlet. That performance inspired him to apply to drama school. In 2005, aged 18, he moved back to London and enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama that same year. He graduated in 2008 and made his professional debut the following year.

  231112

• 3. Life on Stage

  ›

  The play War Horse gave Harington his first professional break. He won the part of Albert Narracott in the National Theatre's adaptation while he was still at drama school, and the show opened his professional career in 2009. The production won two Olivier Awards, and it brought the young actor a great deal of recognition.

  In 2010 he appeared in Posh at the Royal Court Theatre, playing Ed Montgomery. The play is a dark ensemble comedy about upper-class men who attend Oxford University.

  The Donmar Warehouse hosted him in 2015 for The Vote, where he played Colin Henderson. In 2016 he took the title role in Doctor Faustus at the Duke of York's Theatre. Both the production and his own performance drew unfavourable reviews.

  Sam Shepard's True West followed, directed by Matthew Dunster. Harington played Austin when it opened at the Vaudeville Theatre in November 2018, and it closed in February 2019. In 2020 he also joined a virtual performance of an extract from Burn, a play by Chris Thompson.

  In March 2022, he returned to the Donmar Warehouse to play Henry V in the Shakespeare history. Two years later he took the role of Jim in the London transfer of Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play at the Noël Coward Theatre.

  4950535491

• 4. Life as Jon Snow

  ›

  After War Horse, Harington auditioned for television and won his first screen role, as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. The series debuted in 2011 to great critical acclaim, and the network quickly renewed it for a second season.

  The show is set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. It follows noble families as they struggle for control of the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. Jon Snow begins as the illegitimate son of Ned Stark, the honourable lord of Winterfell, an ancient fortress in the North of Westeros. Harington's scenes were filmed largely in Iceland and Northern Ireland.

  In 2012, he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor on Television. The Emmy nominations came in 2016 for supporting actor and in 2019 for lead actor. A Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a television drama also arrived in 2019. By 2017, he had reportedly become one of the highest-paid actors on television, earning £2 million per episode. Across 63 episodes, he played Snow until the series ended with its eighth season in April 2019.

  In June 2022, the author George R. R. Martin, whose A Song of Ice and Fire novels inspired the show, revealed that a Jon Snow spin-off was in early development. Martin said the idea came from Harington himself. Harington later said the team "couldn't find the right story to tell" and that the project was "off the table for the foreseeable future."

  The character lived on elsewhere. Harington voiced Jon Snow in a 2015 video game based on the series. In 2024 his archival audio and likeness appeared in the game Game of Thrones: Legends, and he also featured in its trailer.

  1921226768

• 5. Big Screens and Small

  ›

  Silent Hill: Revelation, released in 2012, was Harington's feature film debut. He played Vincent in the horror sequel, which was based on the survival horror video game Silent Hill 3. The following year, the Young Hollywood Awards named him Actor of the Year.

  Pompeii, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, gave him his first major film lead in 2014. Production began in 2013 in and around Toronto, Ontario, and some scenes were shot in the real city of Pompeii. Harington underwent an intensive body transformation with a personal trainer. The trainer grew worried about the actor's developing body dysmorphia. Critics responded with mixed to negative reviews, and the box office was modest.

  That same year he lent his voice to Eret in DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon 2. The film was a critical and commercial success, won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature and earned an Academy Award nomination. He returned as Eret in How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 2019, which also drew Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

  Seventh Son, also from 2014, put him opposite Jeff Bridges. Harington played Billy Bradley, the first apprentice of Bridges' character, who is killed early in the film by a character played by Julianne Moore. Ben Barnes, Alicia Vikander and Emily Watson also starred. It premiered at the British Film Institute London Film Festival in October 2014, reached wide release in the UK on the 16th of January 2015, and was poorly received. The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, from the director Xavier Dolan, was announced in December 2014. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 and received poor reviews.

  In 2015 Harington starred in 7 Days in Hell, an HBO comedy short about a tennis match lasting seven days. In June of that year, it was confirmed that he would star in Martin Koolhoven's western thriller Brimstone, taking over from Robert Pattinson. In 2016 he played Salen Kotch, the main villain of the video game Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

  In 2019 he hosted the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live, with Sara Bareilles as musical guest. Rose Leslie and Emilia Clarke, his Game of Thrones cast mates, made appearances during the opening monologue.

  In August 2019, Harington joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a role that was not disclosed at first. It turned out to be Dane Whitman in Chloé Zhao's Eternals, alongside Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry and Angelina Jolie. The film arrived in November 2021, drew mixed reviews and grossed over $402 million worldwide.

  Smaller screens took up much of his time too. In September 2020, the second season of Netflix's Criminal: UK premiered on the 16th of that month to positive reviews, with Harington appearing in it. In 2021 he starred opposite Lucy Boynton in the Modern Love episode "Strangers on a (Dublin) Train." In March 2023 he appeared in the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations as Nicholas Bilton.

  2629355559

• 6. Making His Own Roles

  ›

  In February 2017, it was reported that Harington would write, star in and executive produce Gunpowder for the BBC. The three-part historical drama retold the real Gunpowder Plot. He played Robert Catesby, his own ancestor, alongside Mark Gatiss, Liv Tyler and Peter Mullan. Catesby is also his own middle name.

  In 2024, Harington joined the third season of Industry, the HBO and BBC One drama, in a main role. He plays Henry Muck, an aristocrat who is the chief executive of a green energy company. He came back for the fourth season, which premiered in 2026. Hannah J. Davies of The Guardian called his work on the show "career-best."

  Harington is also producing Empire of Dirt, a television thriller that he has described as "a very British Western." It centres on a man who discovers that his family runs a drugs racket.

  In September 2025, he was cast as Sydney Carton in the BBC One miniseries A Tale of Two Cities, adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens. He is an executive producer on that project as well.

  His voice has found new homes too. In 2025 he became Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in an Audible Exclusive audiobook of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In 2026 he returned to the character for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

  In March 2026, during an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he announced that he would star in the Hulu limited series Count My Lies. His co-stars would be Lindsay Lohan and Shailene Woodley.

  5272737670

• 7. Home and Hardship

  ›

  A 15th-century country home outside Ipswich, Suffolk, became Harington's in 2017. He paid £1.75 million for it.

  His relationship with Rose Leslie, his Game of Thrones co-star, began in 2011. On the 27th of September 2017, the couple announced their engagement in the Forthcoming Marriages section of The Times. They married on the 23rd of June 2018 at Rayne Parish Church in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

  In September 2020, Leslie posed for a magazine shoot while visibly pregnant, and by February 2021 the couple had a son. In February 2023, Harington announced that they were expecting a second child. The birth of their daughter was confirmed in July 2023.

  The years of fame had a private cost. In May 2019, Harington checked into a mental health and wellness facility to seek help for "some personal issues." In 2024 he spoke publicly about his struggles with anxiety and alcoholism. He also revealed that he had been diagnosed with ADHD while in rehab.

  Away from work, he is a football fan who supports Manchester United. He also sits on the cultural advisory board of Colossal Biosciences.

  7778798487

• 8. Causes He Backs

  ›

  On the 25th of October 2015, Harington stood on the stage of the Royal Court Theatre in London with Benedict Cumberbatch, Nicole Kidman, James McAvoy and Christopher Eccleston. The charity production was The Children's Monologues, conceived by the Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle. Proceeds went to Boyle's arts charity Dramatic Need, which helps vulnerable children in South Africa and Rwanda build hope and self-belief after conflict, trauma and hardship.

  April 2016 brought two new commitments. He became an ambassador for the Royal Mencap Society, a leading organisation in the United Kingdom that supports people with learning difficulties and their families and carers. On the 16th of April he also became a patron of Longlands Care Farm in Worcestershire, a charity on a working livestock farm. It mentors disadvantaged young people aged 14-19 who are not succeeding in mainstream education.

  On the 12th of September 2016, he appeared with Cate Blanchett, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter Capaldi, Keira Knightley, Stanley Tucci and others in a video for UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. Called "What They Took With Them," it had the actors read a poem by Jenifer Toksvig, inspired by first-hand accounts from refugees. The video was part of the WithRefugees campaign, which includes a petition asking governments to expand asylum.

  In August 2017, he recorded a message backing Mencap's StopSleepInCrisis campaign, which called on the government to fund six years of back pay for overnight carers. He said: "The learning disability sector in the UK is on the brink of crisis." He warned of a back-pay bill of £400 million that providers could not pay, and said many faced bankruptcy.

  On the 10th of October 2018, he took part in Happy Birthday, Harold, a one-off gala at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London. Jamie Lloyd directed a programme of Harold Pinter's work, and the cast included Tom Hiddleston, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Irons and Indira Varma. Proceeds went to Amnesty International and Chance to Shine, two charities Pinter favoured.

  In 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Harington starred in a video asking viewers to help Ukrainian refugees. He also auctioned signed Game of Thrones memorabilia for Ukraine, so souvenirs from the series that made his name raised money for the cause.

  91929599100