The movie moment Matt Smith will never forget: “One of my great days on a film set”
Out this week is Caught Stealing, Darren Aronofsky’s latest film that features Austin Butler doing a chaotic turn as a former baseball star turned bartender on the run from New York’s criminal fraternity. It’s a bit more upbeat than Aronofsky’s usual stuff, and one reason why is Britain’s own Matt Smith appearing as a fully mohawked punk rocker who is fond of a car chase or two.
Smith plays Russ in the movie, a man who requires Butler’s character to babysit his cat for him while he’s away, and all kinds of hijinks ensue in the film, which is getting some very decent reviews as a bit of a throwback ‘90s action caper. Smith, for one, definitely enjoyed his time filming alongside Butler, especially one scene that features him tearing around the Big Apple trying to escape a car full of crims.
He told the Radio Times: “That was one of my great days on a film set. I loved that day, because what we had is this thing called a biscuit, which I’ve never seen anything like. And basically, you’re attached to a rally car engine with a rally car driver, and they’ve got this sort of… how do you describe… like, a winch on the back. So then you’re in, like, this fairground ride, you’ve got a rally car engine and a rally car driver on the front!”
Aronofsky even let Smith do a bit of driving himself to the actor’s delight, and the film marks an exciting end to the year for the Northants born star who aside from being one of Noel Gallagher’s best mates, meaning he got invited to the Oasis tour wrap party the lucky sod, also takes the lead role in the new Sky adaptation of Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Monro.
That’s the Brighton-based story of a sex addicted travelling make-up salesman that’ll be hitting screens at the end of November; a six-part series in which Smith plays the titular anti-hero trying to teach his young son about how to get ahead, hawking cosmetics to housewives. Cave serves as executive producer on the long-awaited screen version of his novel, which was published back in 2009.
It’s another major role for Smith, who has had a huge fifteen years or so since he became Dr Who, replacing David Tennant in playing the phone box-dwelling time traveller. He went from that to playing Patrick Bateman in a stage version of American Psycho and then on to the big screen with Terminator Genisys in 2015. He then picked up an Emmy nomination for playing Prince Philip in Netflix’s The Crown before he was cast in another global show, HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon.
As one of the lead roles on that show, he earned a Critic’s Choice nomination and landed Edgar Wright’s twisty psychological thriller Last Night in Soho off the back of it. He then headed back to a huge franchise with the Spider-Man Universe movie Morbius with Jared Leto in 2022, getting some decent reviews for his performance if not the film itself.
He’s going even bigger than that however as he’s in pre-production on the new Star Wars movie Starfighter, with Ryan Gosling, Amy Adams and Mia Goth, which is slated to open in cinemas in 2027. It’s helmed by Stranger Things director Shaun Levy who also took charge of Deadpool & Wolverine last year.
The Death of Bunny Monro will hit Sky Atlantic on October 13th. Check out the trailer below.
