Matthew Vaughn is sitting in his study, twisting his head from side to side, the peak of his cap slicing and slashing. The director of Kick-Ass and the Kingsman trilogy is frantically looking for Chip. You know Chip. Everyone does. He’s the cat in Vaughn’s new spy thriller Argylle. That’s right, the impossibly cute furball who peers out the window of Bryce Dallas Howard’s designer carrier, then finds himself variously hurled out of a train, parachuting through the sky and plummeting off a building as the action kicks in. Chip, or Alfie as he’s named in the movie, was an instant internet sensation, threatening to become cinema’s most celebrated feline since Jonesy padded around the USCSS Nostromo. And he belongs to Vaughn’s wife, Claudia Schiffer.
‘Chip’s not here,’ concedes Vaughn with a sigh. ‘Sometimes he comes in for a cameo.’ But before you go thinking this is some nepo cat, you should know that Chip actually saved the day when the pro cat failed to shine. ‘We had an acting cat on the first day, and… I don’t know. It was very expensive, and, as far as I could tell, it was just a cat. So I was like, “This isn’t going to work.” Cue Chip. ‘It’s my wife’s cat, but also my daughter’s. I’m a dog person. I grabbed him. I said, “I need to borrow Chip.” I didn’t think it through, because it’s a bit weird, sharing a
