Matt Smith--The Biography

by Emily Herbert

  And Simon Brew, on Den of Geek, was another massive fan. ‘Well crikey,’ he began. ‘Perhaps we’d all better start by sitting down. For if you were awaiting a simple, easy-to-explain blockbuster of a Doctor Who series finale, you simply didn’t get it here. Instead, if you were looking for something really very ambitious, often quite confusing, yet ultimately far more satisfying, then “The Big Bang” absolutely hit the mark. Warts and all. For the avoidance of doubt, let’s make this clear: we loved it. Even if our head hurts too.’

  And so everyone was delighted, all ecstatic with the way the series had been brought to a close. Indeed the biggest complaint about any of it was that viewers were going to have to wait months before they saw the Doctor again. So just who is Matt Smith, this man who brought the legend of the Doctor and his time-travelling Tardis so brilliantly to life?

  CHAPTER 7

  A TIME LORD IS BORN

  Was the curious sound of the Tardis landing echoing in the breeze on 28 October 1982? Did the myriad faces of a 900-year-old Doctor look down knowingly on the balmy autumn night in Nottingham as a little boy made his entrance into the world? There was nothing to hint that one day the newborn baby would achieve greatness with one of the most iconic roles ever on British television – but it was the day Matthew Robert was born to Dave and Lynne Smith. Dave worked in the plastics business; Lynne was to end up in advertising. He had a sister, Laura Jayne, who was to go on to become a dancer. Family life was happy.

  An active little boy, Matt had the usual share of falls and tumbles, at one point managing to end up in hospital. ‘I cracked that open as a kid at nursery, and had to have 24 stitches,’ he told one interviewer, showing off a scar on his forehead. ‘Can you see where it goes back?’ But his childhood was by and large uneventful, although he did establish a closeness with both parents, especially his father, that was going to stand him in very good stead one day and help him to cope with the price of fame.

  Matt attended Northampton School for Boys, where he would one day become head boy, while Laura went to Moulton School. He did all the usual childhood pursuits, including learning to play the piano, and was teased for his angular looks (looks that were to prove extremely photogenic in the years to come), with friends telling him he had a ‘face with elbows.’ In actual fact, that face, which stood out from the crowd, was soon going to stand him in very good stead.

  But it was not acting that interested him back then; it was football. But while that’s the case for many teenage boys, Matt went one further than that, for he was highly talented, and at one stage it looked as if football was actually going to become his career. He played for the youth teams of Northampton Town F.C., Nottingham Forest F.C. and Leicester City F.C. ‘I played for the Cobblers – that’s Northampton Town’s nickname – as a kid and dreamed of turning pro,’ said the adult Matt. ‘Sadly, it didn’t happen but I still follow the team and have fond memories of playing in the town.’

  Indeed, football was in the family: his father had been a centre back and his grandfather was professional, a striker for Notts County. Matt wanted to be a centre back himself, a dream that came crashing about his ears when he was 16 and badly injured his back. His father ferried him back and forth for treatment at Leicester, and after a year he attempted to go back out on the pitch. But it wasn’t the same.

  ‘I could have signed for a lower league club but it was a risk, and the last few games I didn’t want to play, I dreaded it,’ Matt said. ‘I’d lost that desire, the urge, the enjoyment, all the things you need in life. I mean, what’s the point in doing something you don’t enjoy?’

  Actually, Matt was totally shattered by what had happened. Right up until the accident, football had been his life, his future, and his reason for getting up in the morning. It had seemed to be the career path that he would follow, and as such it hadn’t even occurred to him he would one day end up excelling in a totally different field. If a person fixates on one subject and one career to that extent and then abruptly has it taken away from them, the effect can be devastating, and that was what was happened to Matt back then.

  ‘I was talking to my dad about it the other day,’ he told one interviewer. ‘It’s the one time … yes, I was in a mess. Football was everything. You think it’s the one thing you do in your life, your whole focus … But it’s like anything … it’s not the disappointment, it’s how you react to it. I went to do my A-levels and started doing drama.’

  It wasn’t quite as simple as that. Matt had grown up thinking he was going to be a footballer. Even after he’d got the role of Doctor Who, one of the most prestigious gigs a young actor could hope for, the subject of the football career that never was would come up over and over again. ‘It was very tough, though,’ he said in one interview. ‘I remember crying, because that was all I’d ever invested in. I hadn’t really considered acting.’ On another occasion, he admitted, ‘That was a difficult time. But you know, what doesn’t kill you …’ In fact, of course, he was even going to be able to put his footballing skills to good use in the episode ‘The Lodger’, which just goes to prove that few experiences are wasted if turned on their head.

  But it didn’t feel like that at the time. Matt was all set to become a professional athlete; the realisation that that aspect of his life was over was a very hard blow to bear. Did he but know it, though, the skills he had learned as an athlete were actually going to stand him in good stead as an actor. It would just take some time before that came out. ‘There are great disciplines from being a sportsman that you can transfer into being an artist,’ he later acknowledged. ‘The preparation, the sacrifice, the constant desire to improve.’ Indeed, what he had learned in those early days was total professionalism, which was going to work very much in his favour in the days that lay ahead.

  It was one of Matt’s teachers who saved him, Jeremy Hardingham, whom Matt was later (understandably) to praise to the skies. Jeremy saw that Matt had been all but destroyed by the abrupt end to his footballing career and that he badly needed something in his life to take its place. There are some familiarities between football and acting, both those outlined above by Matt and the fact that both are to some extent a performance on the public stage, so in a move that was frankly inspired, he put Matt’s name down as the tenth juror in the play Twelve Angry Men. When Matt found out what he’d done, he took part in the play – but it was by no means the case that he suddenly found his new love. Quite the contrary. It took Matt a little while to realise that he’d finally found his métier.

  ‘I had a wonderful teacher called Mr Hardingham, who put my name down for a play without my knowing about it,’ he later recalled. ‘It was Twelve Angry Men and I was Juror Number 10. And then he put me in a drama festival and I didn’t turn up, because I was a footballer and acting wasn’t that cool. But he kept pushing me and he got me the forms to apply for the National Youth Theatre. I started going to London and spending the summer doing plays with them.’

  Gradually, it began to stick. Much to his own surprise, Matt discovered that he loved acting – and was very good at it, too. And so his involvement began to increase. It had felt like the end of the world when his footballing career had been taken away from him – but now Matt was beginning to discover another passion.

  Jeremy was thrilled when he saw his protégé was beginning to stand out from the crowd. ‘When I first suggested he should try out for a school play he said he wasn’t really that interested and had his heart set on becoming a footballer,’ he said. ‘But just from seeing him in the classroom I knew he had something and I cast him in the play without telling him. As soon as he took to the stage he commanded a certain presence, which made you instantly sit up and take notice. After much cajoling, he slowly started to believe he was good enough to play the parts and really grew into them.’

  Jeremy was, in fact, determined that Matt should start acting, and enlisted the help of his mother to get him interested. ‘I was head of drama and when he’d done his GCSEs I wanted him to come ba
ck and do A-level drama,’ he said. We had a new theatre built after the fire and we were doing auditions for a production of Twelve Angry Men. I rang his mum and she said he was on holiday so I told her, “Tell him he’s got a part in this play and he’s going to do it.” He didn’t have any choice really. His mum and I made a pact that we were going to get him on stage. He did really well in the play and it’s like he suddenly said to himself, “Yeah, I like this,” and he threw himself into A-level drama. Everything we chucked at him he lapped up. He had a huge hunger to learn and a great work ethic. He was made head boy because he was so popular and a very charismatic young man. He didn’t think he’d make it in acting – he was very humble and self-effacing. He was thinking of doing history at university but I persuaded him to go and do acting. He joined the National Youth Theatre and a coachload of students and staff went to watch him in their production of Murder in the Cathedral. He was great.’

  As for the role he was to take on a few years hence, Jeremy was stunned. ‘I was absolutely shocked like everybody else when I realised he had landed the role,’ he said. ‘Obviously there was a bit of speculation before it was announced but I’m convinced he will be ideal for it. I’ve known him since he was 14 and even then he was a versatile actor. There are hundreds of kids who pass through school hoping to become a famous TV star and it is really refreshing to see someone who never really had designs on it eventually trying their heart out and achieving it.’

  Unsurprisingly, Matt continued to praise the man who had done so much for him. ‘He had a significant part in my life,’ he said. ‘I didn’t bother turning up to rehearsals or an audition for a play once, when I was in year nine or ten, and thought I had missed my opportunity. I don’t think I was very reliable at the time but he still cast me in that play. He took a chance on me and gave me lots of opportunities and guidance.’

  To a certain extent, despite the fact that he was clearly naturally talented, Matt had been very lucky indeed. Truly inspirational teachers can change lives, and so it proved to be in this case. Without Jeremy’s determination that this clearly bright and able young man should find another outlet for his energy and resourcefulness, Matt might never have started acting – and the Eleventh Doctor might have been a very different cup of tea, indeed.

  And in the eyes of his teacher, Matt’s talent was clearly obvious right away. ‘He wasn’t enthusiastic – he’d done no acting before – but he got the taste for it and he was absolutely fantastic,’ Jeremy later recalled. As the Doctor, Matt was famously to repeat the line, ‘Bow ties are cool’ – back then, he was beginning to discover that acting was, too.

  As a matter of fact it was beginning to change his life in all sorts of ways, boosting his confidence and opening his eyes to other possibilities. Matt was really beginning to come into his own. Acting gave him greater confidence, so he decided that he wanted to be head boy, too. He went for it – and won. ‘I was the outside choice,’ he told one interviewer. ‘I curried favour among friends. I just wanted the mantle. I wanted to run things. I wanted control. It was the highest position, and I wanted the highest position. Why not? Then you get to organise the ball and you get to say if you have a yearbook and every Tuesday you go out for a meeting for two hours and get out of triple maths. There was a big hoo-ha with a mate called Dean, because he thought I was using underhand tactics to get votes.’ He applied exactly the same determination when going for the role of Doctor, a few years down the line.

  By this time, Matt was doing so well as a school actor, that he was beginning to arouse a certain amount of jealousy among friends. One schoolmate was Stuart Robinson, who went on to become a supermarket manager in Swindon. ‘We knew each other from 13 years old and had separate friends, but we only really got to know each other in our A-level drama class,’ he recalled. ‘Matt always had the lead roles in any productions we did. There was certainly plenty of acting talent at the school but it seemed that Matt got all the main roles. I didn’t think he was that good an actor – I thought I was just as good as him – but I guess it’s down to favouritism sometimes. There was some jealousy.

  ‘Me and my group of friends labelled him Lord Matt of Smithington because he always seemed to get everything. In our A-level performances he would get the main role in the play and we would only get the minor roles. So how can you get marked in your A-level when you’re in a minor role? It’s unfair. He didn’t seem to notice that there were certain people who didn’t really like him that much. We got on well and there was a certain level of respect there between us, but it was just the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t really Matt’s fault, it was just the way he was and the way people thought of him.’

  Paul Colliver, who went on to manage an arts-based workshop in Nottingham, also revealed that there was some jealousy at how well Matt was doing back then. ‘He got the majority of the starring parts and I remember for the A-level exam piece, The Venetian Twins, I was hoping to get the starring role but of course he got it,’ he said. ‘I was disappointed and a bit miffed, but it actually worked out well for me because I got one of my highest marks. The sixth form was mixed – girls and boys. I think the girls admired Matt more for his acting skills than anything else and I wasn’t aware of him ever having a girlfriend there.’

  He was certainly going to go on to become popular with girls in the future, of which more anon.

  Another classmate was Christian Pinches, who later become a set designer. He remembered Matt as a very lively young man indeed. ‘He was one of the lads, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘I remember he instigated a game where you had to keep a football up and the first person who couldn’t do it would get beaten up by everyone else. But he wasn’t a bully and he began to mature as the years went on. I remember when he got into acting, in assembly he would perform little acts and warm-ups to advertise the latest show he was in – really in your face – with dramatic moments from the play.’

  One of Matt’s teachers was Matt Evans, who taught GCSE drama and A-level psychology. He also remembered a very lively youngster, who was so full of laughs and joking that even when he was being serious people didn’t always realise it. ‘My lasting memory of him was our last-ever drama lesson in year 11,’ he said. ‘It was the final lesson in our old drama building and we were doing loads of improvisation. I put the light console on full and left the room for some reason. About five minutes later, Matt comes running up the corridor shouting, “Sir, sir, the drama studio’s on fire!” You could never tell when he was serious or joking, so I said, “No it isn’t, Matt. Now go away.” But it turned out he was serious – the whole place was ablaze! He’s quite an extrovert, quite a loud character, vibrant and always dominating the scene. He always wanted to answer the question, even if he knew he’d be hopelessly wrong. He’s too intelligent to play the fool, but he’d always have a wisecrack to make, which I found endearing. Matt was very keen to impress and wants to please everybody 100 per cent of the time. I used to tell Matt to underplay things when he was acting because he’s an extrovert. But I guess you need to be a bit of an extrovert to play Doctor Who so that’s perfect for him.’

  Meanwhile, Matt had been fortunate enough to meet another inspirational figure who was to play a huge role in his life. The late Edward Wilson was the Artistic Director of the National Youth Theatre, and an inspiration to Matt, who was beginning to realise that this was where his future really lay. He directed Matt as Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, another seminal experience that was to send him on his way. ‘He was a delightful man, he really gave me a springboard and the confidence and the courage to go on and do it,’ Matt said. ‘So I owe him a lot.’

  You could say that again. Although he was not anywhere near ready to turn professional, Matt did so well in the play that he got an agent – and that despite the fact that he was still to go to university, the University of East Anglia, where he was to study drama and creative writing from 2002 to 2005. His work with the National Youth Theatre was also putting him in some prett
y starry company: Murder in the Cathedral was performed in Westminster Cathedral, and members of the audience included Prince Edward, Sir Ian McKellen and Simon Callow. It was heady stuff. ‘The great thing about the National Youth Theatre is the support it has from actors,’ said Matt as an adult. ‘It is a marvellous platform for young actors and I would encourage any young people to apply. I’ve met hordes of people through it.’

  It was while he was with the National Youth Theatre that Matt met the Treadaway twins, Luke and Harry, who later became two of his closest friends. ‘You’re only 18 so they give you this pep talk about not having sex with anyone,’ Matt recalled, tongue firmly in cheek. ‘I was leaning out of the window, and then from the room opposite, this head appeared, having a fag. It was Harry. Then the head of this other twin, Luke, appeared. We’ve been friends ever since; it’s like a little collective.’

  It was while Matt was at university that he was to meet the next inspirational teacher who would change his life – his tutor, Jon Hyde. Some years later, when it was announced that Matt was about to take on his iconic role, Jon was thrilled, and remembered his old pupil fondly. But he was as surprised as everyone else.

  ‘I just tuned into the television like everyone else. I was really gob-smacked when I saw this young chap that I’d worked with for three years sitting there in the studio, talking about being the new Doctor Who,’ he said. ‘It was very exciting. I didn’t even know Matt was in the running; they kept it pretty secret. All of a sudden, there he was. This is a great achievement and I am absolutely delighted for him. He was a very dedicated student, very inventive, determined, and you could see he was hugely talented. He is a bright young man and a brilliant comic actor particularly. He had a lot of friends, and worked hard.’

  That talent for comedy was one that was to surface time and again in the role of Who, but during his time at university no one knew where it could lead. Matt was proving to be an outstanding student, however, very quickly proving to be one of the leading talents of his year.