THE LEOPARD THAT CHANGED ITS SPOTS
HE HAD no idea how demanding it is being a parent – until he became one himself. Which is why every morning, shortly before he wakes his six-month-old baby, Kit Harington rings his mother to express thanks for all she and his dad did for him.
“I can’t believe I took them for granted like that. I look at our boy and I’m, like, ‘I’m never going to get the thanks I deserve for changing all these nappies and looking after you!’”
The baby – he and his wife, actress Rose Leslie, don’t wish to make his name public – was born at University College Hospital in London in January.
Kit’s impression of the event is still his profound shock. “I remember saying over and again, ‘It’s a baby. It’s a baby. It’s a baby’.”
As Kit has a phobia of needles and fainted at one antenatal examination, he didn’t cut the cord. “I’m a real wimp when it comes to blood and pain,” he says.
Fatherhood and marriage are central to the superstar’s life. Sober for two-and-a-half years following a stint in rehab, he feels settled now. Retreating on the horizon is a period so dark he thought about taking his own life.
It’s a period that overlapped with the last days of Jon Snow, the Game of Thrones character he played for almost a decade to an audience so fanatical that 19,3 million watched the finale.
Life is wonderful, he says. “I have a child and my relationship is brilliant . . . I’m a very, very
