Kit Harington On Getting Into Gladiator Shape For ‘Pompeii’

Kit Harington shed his “Game of Thrones” Night’s Watch cloak for a gladiator skirt in “Pompeii” — and he explained how he got his extremely cut physique for his big screen role.

“On a practical level, I’m playing a gladiator and they were very, very fit men and they were fighters and they had to look a certain way and be a certain way and I thought I’d be doing the story an injustice if I didn’t go to the gym quite a bit,” Kit told Access Hollywood as he promoted the film in Los Angeles, recently.

“And then it becomes obsessional. Once you go along that path, it’s hard to slow down,” he said of keeping up the routine that got him looking like this:

The actor said getting in top shape had a lot to do with what he put into his body.

WATCH: Kit Harington Talks Getting Into Fighting Shape & Gladiator Boot Camp

“It’s a whole process. You have a [nutritionist]. It’s 70 percent diet and 30 percent working out and you get into a regime and you just keep going,” he told Access. “It’s tough to start with. … You then have to maintain it throughout the film. … It’s not eating bad things, which is the hardest [part].”

Beyond having the body of a gladiator, the Englishman had to look like he was used to battling to the death under the arena sun, which meant various tanning methods.

“I tried spray tanning, it was horrific,” he said. “I didn’t do spray tanning because you have to get [a] spray tan and then stay there, like very still, for like eight hours and it rubs off on everything and your nails are yellow and I just couldn’t stand it. So, then we tried real tanning on sunbeds and that’s apparently very dangerous for you, so I stopped that. And we reverted to me just having two women come oil me up with tanning lotion.”

“Pompeii” hits theaters on February 21, 2014.

— Jolie Lash