Matt Smith Says His Punk Caught Stealing Role Is Really 'A Sweet Guy'

Matt Smith shows up in Darren Aronofsky's Caught Stealing looking like trouble: leather, a loud mohawk, and a voice set to permanent snarl. Then he asks a neighbor to feed his cat. Welcome to the movie.

The punk with the cat

Smith plays Russ, a punk who blasts into the story early, drops his cat with Hank (Austin Butler), and bolts back to the UK to see his dying father. It is a quick hit of a role at first, and then he vanishes for a stretch — which meant Smith and Aronofsky had to front-load a lot of character in very little time. Smith says they tackled that on day one: Russ is introduced in a swirl of anxiety and stress, but underneath, there is a softer core. Aronofsky even nudged him toward the word 'sweet' — the kind of person who acts out because he feels everything a little too much.

"There is a tenderness, even though he is a punk!"

Aronofsky calls it a very hard part: Russ has a kind of simplicity to him that is tough to play without flattening it, and you still have to feel the tenderness under the spikes. That push-pull is the whole point.

One of Smith's favorite bits is Russ squaring off, in his own way, with the guy in the opposite flat, Duane (George Abud). Duane is basically the anti-Russ, all the energies he cannot stand. Smith loved that dynamic — seeing this neighbor every day who, to Russ, is everything he hates — and says it made for a pretty great first day at work.

Set in the 90s underworld, and primed for a crowd

The film is mostly planted in the criminal underbelly of 90s New York, and it sounds like it plays. Aronofsky watched it with a British audience at the UK premiere and said the crowd locked in right away: they laughed through the opening, and when Russ shows up again later, the room popped.

Also: there is a car chase

Smith flags one sequence as a personal all-timer: a high-octane car chase he calls one of his great days on a film set. Not subtle, but it does the job.

Release date

Caught Stealing hits UK cinemas on Friday 29 August 2025.