Here's Why Cousin Matthew Looks So Different

Since Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens appeared on the GLAAD Awards Red Carpet over the weekend debuting a slimmer, scruffier and darker-haired look, we've all been wondering what's prompted the new makeover. And, as we learned last night when we had the chance to talk to Stevens at a press reception for the Big British Invite -- a "choose your own adventure"-style pop-up in Soho that highlighted everything cool hunters should know about in British culture (think Wah Nails and King Tut's Wah Wah Hut pop-ups) -- the new style is not the result of the actor "going Hollywood" as some have speculated but the result of a new role. A role as a heroin trafficker, to be specific. (We'll give you a second to mentally adjust to the news that Cousin Matthew is trading in his white tie and tails for speedballs and smack.)

Stevens' new role will appear in A Walk Among the Tombstones, a forthcoming film directed by Scott Frank that also stars Liam Neeson and Boyd Holbrook. The actor tells us "it's a grizzly crime thriller and Liam [Neeson] plays a former cop-turned-private detective who's also an alcoholic. One of the strands of the plot is that he comes to help a drug trafficker whose wife has been kidnapped and murdered and that's me." The movie is currently being filmed in Brooklyn so the next time you see a shady-looking man lurking on a street corner in King's County, give him a second glance because it could be Cousin Matthew.