Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington has revealed that he was brought up in a gender-fluid household.

The 33-year-old - best known for playing Jon Snow in the fantasy drama - told The Telegraph that his mother, the former playwright Deborah Jane Catesby, deliberately shunned traditional gender stereotypes when raising him and his brother John.

"I asked for a Mighty Max and she bought me a Polly Pocket," he said. "I asked for an Action Man and I got a doll – it was very gender fluid from the word go. And I went with it.

"I feel that emotionally men have a problem, a blockage, and that blockage has come from the Second World War, passed down from grandfather to father to son.

"We do not speak about how we feel because it shows weakness, because it is not masculine.

"Having portrayed a man who was silent, who was heroic, I feel going forward that is a role I don't want to play anymore."

Harington will next be seen in Eternals, a new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that will also star Richard Madden, Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek.