Some players happily spend their retirement on the golf course. Then there are those who plunge headfirst into careers as a coach or pundit.
Not John Carew. Instead, he finds himself acting with Angelina Jolie, starring in Netflix romcoms and longing to become a James Bond villain.
The Norwegian speaks to The Athletic after filming his role in a hit festive series on the streaming service, where he played the romantic interest of a woman searching for love at Christmas.
(Spoiler alert: Carew is not like other ex-footballers. He generally prefers discussing the technical method acting of Tom Hardy to his own goalscoring exploits.)
The former striker could yet become as renowned for a second career in Hollywood as he was for spells playing in the Premier League, Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s La Liga, to name a few.
In a rare interview, the 46-year-old discussed his path from locker rooms to film-set green rooms, rooting for his Oscar-nominated friend and why he carefully studies Peaky Blinders.
“I want to build characters from scratch and create something nice with this beautiful art of acting,” he says. “It’s nice to get to work with interesting people and have fun.”
To fans of Aston Villa, Roma and Valencia, Carew was a popular 6ft 5in (195cm) striker with model good looks. To his managers, he occasionally lacked belief in his own prowess despite a knack for regularly finding the back of the net.
As for his team-mates, they occasionally found Carew something of an enigma. He began exploring his interest in acting during downtime at Aston Villa, where he scored 48 goals in 131 appearances, but told nobody in the game.
John Carew celebrates scoring for Aston Villa against Manchester City in 2010 (Andrew Yates/AFP via Getty Images)
“I started acting classes in 2009,” he says. “It was having a coach come over to an apartment I had in London and working on texts and how to get into a character. I’d had an interest for a while during my football career.
“I was 100 per cent dedicated to football when I was younger and this came slightly later without having any background in it. It was learning about the theory and the technical part of acting that really interested me.
“The coach came once, sometimes twice a week and I was filmed a couple of times reading emotionally in front of the camera.
“I don’t think I told them (team-mates) much. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I’m not the type of personality to talk about things all the time unless it’s necessary. Then, when I retired, I had more time.
“Being in a movie might mean you need to be on location for many months or something, so obviously you can’t commit to it as a professional footballer. One or two days of availability in the summer break isn’t going to cut it.”
Carew hung up his boots in 2012 after a final season in England, playing for West Ham United in the second tier as they clinched promotion back to the Premier League.
Before long, he got the lead part in a low-budget Canadian horror film, Dead of Winter, set in the icy Colorado mountains.
The experience was bracing, in more than one way, but Carew was hooked. “It was six weeks of filming, two hours outside Toronto,” he explains. “We were in this freezing cold place, working 12-hour days. It was like being at an acting camp. I loved it.
“A small group of people trying to create something together. A proper movie experience. When it came out, some people on Twitter saw it in parts of Europe and tagged me in it. I think they were surprised. That film gave me the appetite to continue acting.”
He had nearly made a brief return to football the previous year, when Inter signed him as a trialist with the idea to provide injury cover.
No playing time materialised at San Siro, and he subsequently retired for good. But the striker, who scored 24 goals in 91 appearances for Norway, soon noted familiar elements between his new and former professions.
“You’re used to being under pressure as a player, so there are similarities,” he says. “Working with other actors is teamwork. You’re all trying to create something together in the way a team is trying to win a game. Each has to do their job well, and everyone depends on each other.
“There’s always pressure and I was used to it — even having the camera in my face. I never cared about that when I was playing. I could do my job even though that pressure existed. You need to handle a situation where you have to perform.”
Carew maintained his interest in football even as his acting career took off. He calls Villa “his club” and is thrilled by their recent progress. In 2023, he even watched a game at Villa Park with another of their fans, the future King of England, Prince William.
The game would also offer him respite during a difficult time. In 2022, Carew was sentenced to 14 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion in Norway.
He admitted failing to report taxable income and assets of around £26.7m ($36m) between 2014 and 2019, but said he had been advised that it was unnecessary to pay tax there as he lived abroad.
For part of his sentence, he was allowed out to work with the Norwegian Football Federation coaching young players, while wearing an ankle tag.
Although his stint advising the stars of the future was such a success that it continues today, the conviction which partly led to it is not a chapter upon which he likes to dwell.
“I haven’t been asked before,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll talk much about it. It was a quick chapter that I’ve almost forgotten, and it’s best left in the past. It’s something that we’ve put behind us.”
Life in front of the camera, though, was just getting interesting.
In 2018, he was cast in the Norwegian series Heimebane (Home Ground) about a woman who is appointed as head coach of a professional men’s team. Carew played the side’s disgruntled former star player who coveted the top job himself.
“I would have been sad if I didn’t get this role,” he says. “We did two seasons, with each episode lasting almost an hour — it was like making eight movies and so interesting.
“It was easier for me to understand the world the character was in. Because I had been a player, I could imagine her situation a little more, although her challenge was partly as a woman in the men’s game.
“As a subject, it definitely engaged and challenged people. I’d say that was my breakthrough.”
Carew says that a fifth of the country saw the show, and Norway’s prime minister even discussed it. The following year brought a different prospect altogether. In 2019, he was cast as a warrior in Disney fantasy ‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’ starring Jolie, Michelle Pfeiffer and Chiwetel Ejiofor among a star-studded cast.
“It was a small role but a great experience to be on a set at that level and see some of the greatest actors in the world working,” Carew recalls.
“Me and Angelina were on set together for eight days. When you have a small role, you realise they can be just as important. You might be in a lot of scenes with not many lines and so there’s a lot of waiting, but you have to adapt and you can’t switch off.
“When you’re in such a big production, you really appreciate being in that space. I did a lot of watching and learning.”
Although Carew savoured the experience of observing the A-listers at work, he is not fuelled by a desire to be the star in every project. “Sometimes little roles can be important,” he says. “You see movies when a big actor has a fleeting part but it can be very memorable. I’ve seen Tom Hanks, like Champions League level, show up for five minutes in a scene and it’s what people remember.”
He says he is drawn more to naturalistic roles, and is a huge admirer of the Norwegian Oscar-nominee Renate Reinsve, who is both a friend and a source of inspiration from her acclaimed roles in the award-winning drama ‘The Worst Person In the World’ and last year’s much-vaunted ‘Sentimental Value’.
“I think Norway has the best female actor in the world right now in Renate,” he says. “She is very humble and we’re very proud of her in Norway.
“But I don’t admire her so much just because we’re from the same country. She has something that not many actors have: she reminds me of Meryl Streep. Renate can be in a scene with anyone and she will almost make them disappear. It’s a gift you can’t learn.
“Right now, in 2026, I can’t see any other actor in the world at her level. I’ve been to see Sentimental Value twice since it came out. The camera loves her. She comes through the screen and doesn’t even seem to be trying.”
Carew studies his acting heroes carefully, and perhaps none more keenly than British star Hardy.
“Of course I love Anthony Hopkins, Denzel Washington and Al Pacino; the classics,” he says. “But if I think about how I want to approach a character, then I look at Tom Hardy. He’s the blueprint for me.
“It inspires me how he breaks down a character and then builds it up. It’s how he lets dialogue marinate, and it’s closest to how I want to do it. If you watch him in Peaky Blinders, there are some scenes when he’s so good you can barely believe it. To use the football analogy again, he is Real Madrid level.”
Hardy has been linked with becoming the next 007 since the end of Daniel Craig’s stint as James Bond. Should he ever land the job, Carew would love nothing better than to attempt to foil his hero with a few on-screen challenges.
“I want to be a villain in a James Bond movie,” he declares, before specifying: “Not the main villain, but a hitman. I want to be the baddie’s right-hand man, like a silent assassin who loses a fight to Bond halfway through.”
Away from dreams of big-screen villainy, he is also excited to watch Norway compete at the summer’s World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
“It’s football fever here,” he says. “The whole country is excited. We have Erling Haaland and he’s a fantastic striker. He is certainly the best goalscorer in the world in terms of his numbers, and I hope he can challenge the greatest of all time.
“He can do it against anyone. Erling has scored more goals than he’s had games for Norway.”
Carew knows what he is talking about after all, as he is sixth in the list of his country’s all-time scorers. Now, though, he is intent on achieving his other, gloriously varied goals.
“I really enjoyed filming Home for Christmas,” he says. “It was a No 1 show on Netflix in Norway. I’m looking to do other good projects like that and have characters I can really work with that interest me. It doesn’t need to be anything big.
“The best movies can be the cheapest sometimes. It’s the human aspect that touches us. Of course, I’d love to work with (Sentimental Value director) Joachim Trier in that respect.”
After starring at so many top clubs, he also dreams of fulfilling those Hollywood ambitions. But Carew’s main objective is to continue immersing himself ever deeper into his new craft.
“I just want to do things I am passionate about,” he says. “To keep learning and mostly have peace and quiet, to be honest.”