Did you know 'House of the Dragon' actor Matt Smith suffers from a rare disease?

Matt Smith is one of the most relevant actors of the last decade in television. 'Doctor Who,' 'The Crown,' 'House of the Dragon'... just a few titles of his incredibly successful career.

The British actor played the Eleventh Doctor in 'Doctor Who', the Duke of Edinburgh in 'The Crown', and, more recently, he takes his Daemon Targaryen to task in 'House of the Dragon'.

Photo: HBO

What not everyone knows is that Matt Smith initially pursued a completely different career. He wanted to become a football player in the Premier League and even signed with Leicester City.

Matt Smith (1982) was trained in the academies of Northampton Town, Nottingham Forest, and Leicester City. He was a young promise in the Premier League at the end of the 90s.

However, when he was 16 years old, and forming part of the Leicester City youth team, Matt Smith received a harsh diagnosis that forced him to give up on his football career prematurely

The young talent had cervical spondylosis, a degenerative back disease that reduces sports performance at the highest level. Even though this disease is more common after the age of 60, Matt Smith developed it much earlier than usually.

Basically, this cervical spondylosis affects the intervertebral discs in the neck. It causes them to shrink and eventually leads to osteoarthritis. This includes protrusions known as bone spurs.

Matt Smith himself recalled his disappointment when he spoke to Kirsty Young on 'Radio 4's Desert Island Discs' on BBC Radio.

The actor remembers that "it was a difficult time because I felt unfulfilled."

That feeling for a 16-year-old caused Matt Smith to deny the painful reality for a long time.

"My ego said: 'I am that, I am a footballer.' And you know how it is; at school, he was everyone’s a football player... and all of a sudden, [I was] nothing,'" recalled Matt Smith.

After a season of denial and somewhat of a depression, Matt Smith remembers that a single phrase brought him back to reality.

It was Terry Hardingham, his acting teacher, who told the young Matt Smith: "You were never meant to be a footballer, I always thought you were very good at acting."

To this day, it is impossible to know how far soccer player Matt Smith would have come. What is undeniable, however, is that the actor Matt Smith is overflowing with talent and has some excellent roles on his resumé.

Image: House of the Dragon / Instagram

Born in 1982, Matt Smith would have retired from the world of football by now. Meanwhile, his acting career still has decades ahead of him.

Painful as it is, thanks to Matt Smith's illness, television has had a Doctor Who with the coolest bangs and a 'House of the Dragon' with the most hypnotic villain of 2022. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Photo: HBO