From Downton Abbey to The Good Wife (not to mention a Hollywood film career, a perfect family life and a collection of famous mates in between), actor Matthew Goode has had it pretty good so far. And with a starring role in the new series of Netflix’s lavish royal drama The Crown, things are about to get even better, says Viv Groskop
Despite his extremely caddish good looks, I find myself wanting to dislike Matthew Goode intensely. You see, he’s just a bit too good to be true. He has the perfect life. The pick of film and TV roles. Best mates with “Ben” (Cumberbatch) and Jamie Dornan. A gorgeous wife, Sophie, and three kids. A luxurious country pile in Surrey. (OK, I’m guessing it’s luxurious. He has not invited me round yet.) Really, he should be incredibly annoying. However, it turns out he’s the opposite. Completely, almost ludicrously, charming. And funny, entertaining company. Much as you want to hate him, you just can’t. I can see why “Ben” and Jamie want to hang around with him.
Already well-known for his roles in The Imitation Game (alongside “Ben”), Match Point, A Single Man, The Good Wife and Downton Abbey, Goode is about to hit the even bigger time with a star turn in The Crown, the Netflix phenomenon. He’s playing Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon, the aristocratic society photographer who had an ill-fated, stormy 18-year marriage to Princess Margaret (played spiritedly by Vanessa Kirby).
He got the call just before last Christmas. It later turned out the director (Ben Caron) had directed Cumberbatch in Sherlock and also went to school with Matthew’s sister (of course he did). “Ben [the director] is extremely passionate and funny and he gave me this huge folder of stuff about Snowdon. I didn’t know a huge amount about him, although obviously I knew who he was. I decided to jump into it...with some trepidation as I was a fan of the first series. But more than most actors, I’ve had experience of jumping into successful series. It can give you the willies. But Ben gave me the confidence that I could pull it off.”
His performance is very, ahem, watchable, zipping around the back streets of London with Princess Margaret (Kirby) on his motorbike. Goode says he wasn’t intimidated by playing a real-life character but it was unnerving that Snowdon died just as they started filming. “In the first film I ever did, The Imitation Game, I was playing the writer Hugh Alexander. But when you’re playing Lord Snowdon… He’s a well-known public figure and there are still many people who can remember how he sounded, how he acted. You don’t want your performance to become an impression, though, you’re trying to find their essence. That’s what Claire [Foy, as the Queen], Matt [Smith, as Prince Phillip] and Vanessa [Kirby, as Princess Margaret] have managed to do so brilliantly.”
He loved “zipping in and around Buckingham Palace” on the bike and the fact that the shoot was in the UK, so that he could be with his family. And he loved Snowdon’s look. “I remember when I was working with Tom Ford [on A Single Man, alongside Colin Firth], he was very enamoured with Snowdon and his sense of style. Snowdon was pretty modern and interesting and dressed rather wonderfully. The costumes I had… I thought they were quite flash.”
A lot of people expect Goode to be based in Los Angeles but he says he would hate to leave the UK. So The Crown is perfect for him. “I’m very much based here. I have three children and a lovely wife and I just don’t like being away from them. Of course, needs must occasionally. But I’m very lucky. I’ve been able to mix work and family.” He grew up in the countryside in Cornwall and feels as if he has come back to his roots, just in a different part of the country. “I do miss Cornwall a bit. It’s one of the reasons it has been nice to retreat outside of London and be in a rural area. I grew up in a farming community. I adored it and had a fantastic childhood. Then I lived in cities from the age of eighteen, first in Birmingham, studying drama at university, then in London. It’s been so nice to wake up and see some fields in the morning. And the air quality is better.” See? He is even nice enough to care about air quality.
Although Goode comes across as old-school posh (and many of the parts that have most captured our attention channel this part of him), he says he had a fairly ordinary upbringing. “My mother divorced from her first marriage with three kids and met my father in a folk music club. He was a geologist and she was a nurse. She did have a huge passion for the theatre, though, and ran The Campion Players, the local amateur dramatics group. She involved me from a young age. I always thought that actors were an incredibly fun bunch and smart with it.”
It may not have been the most thespy of backgrounds, but I suspect when you look like Matthew, things just sort of land in your lap. His mother’s best friend happened to know Stephen Daldry (the director of Billy Elliot and The Hours). He mentions in passing that he was chatting to Nicole Kidman about this recently. As you do. Despite the am dram experience, though, he says: “I never imagined that I would be an actor. I was just trying to put off getting a job. When I went to study drama, a friend of mine Garry Crystal [an actor turned documentary maker] got into Webber Douglas [a London drama school] and I thought, ‘I should give that a crack.’”
Although he has worked steadily throughout his career, it was his role as Lady Mary’s fast car-driving love interest in Downton Abbey that really propelled him to people’s attention. “I had asked to be part of it a few years before and it hadn’t worked out.” (Interesting. I could see him in the role Dan Stevens took and eventually abandoned, having his character written out when the series became unexpectedly popular and kept being recommissioned.) “Then I happened to be doing a job with Michelle Dockery [Lady Mary] and we had a laugh. She said, ‘Would you like to come and marry me in Downton?’ I love her so much and I thought what a brilliant giggle that would be.” You see what I mean? These things just happen to him.
Downton Abbey was a job he loved as it was forty-five minutes from his front door. Clearly, family matters. “It’s not easy,” he says, when I mention the challenges of juggling family and career, “But I’m very blessed to have an amazing wife who encourages me to get out of the house. You do feel a bit bad about being away. And I haven’t taken certain jobs when they’ve said, We need you here for six months. I think it’s fine to say: ‘I don’t feel the need to do that.’ I feel like the family is a great litmus test against a script. If you feel like the work is going to take you away from your family, it had better be worth it.”
What’s the secret of a happy marriage? “A good cellar. Somewhere you can store wine. And not being in each other’s pockets the whole time. You have to have something for yourself. I’ve always had a hobby. When the kids go to school, I go fishing. Sophie used to ride a lot when she was a child and she recently got back into that. So we have a bit of fun on the side,” he laughs. Mostly their life is happily boring, he adds, “We stay in and have friends around.” He is a boxset and Netflix binger and recently got heavily into the Jason Bateman series Ozark.
He is also a big fan of golf, which is apparently a good way to meet Jamie Dornan. I may have to take it up. “My major passion is the Dunhill Links.” You’re losing me a bit here, Matthew, but go on. “I was invited to play the European tour event this year at St Andrews with Jamie Dornan and that was joyous.” Yes, that bit of it is joyous. “My dream is to get to a four handicap like I had when I was sixteen. Now it’s seven. But as Jamie says, ‘I’ve never actually seen you play to that handicap.’” (For anyone who doesn’t know about golf, this is a pretty damn good handicap. If you get to zero you’re a pro.)
He clearly thinks it’s important to have other things in his life besides acting. I wonder if The Crown will change his profile completely and propel him to a level where he won’t be able to play so much golf. “Any time you’re in something that big, it can’t harm you,” he says, “But I’m hardly Benedict [Cumberbatch]. I’m very lucky. I’ve had some sort of niche. I’m not sure what it is. With Benedict you can point to Sherlock as the part when people went “Wow” and now he’s riding very high. God bless him for it, he’s a good friend. I’m aiming for longevity. Just as long as I can pay the mortgage, I’m happy. You can be as ambitious as you want but you’re very lucky if something lands in your lap that a bigger actor hasn’t taken. My ambition is to work with great scripts and great directors.” He pauses. “But I hate talking about it. It makes me sound like an arse.”
No, it doesn’t. It makes him sound like a normal person who just wants to do well. A normal person in an incredibly attractive package who is very good at portraying rather delightful aristocrats. Even if he claims that’s all a bit of an accident. “I’m not a “port out, starboard home” sort of guy,” he shrugs, referring to the expression that originally gave “posh” its name (meaning people who could afford to go on cruises), “But it has turned out to be my bread and butter.” Long may he feast on it.
The Crown Season 2 is available on Netflix now
