Sign up to FREE email alerts from Mirror - celebs Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Doctor Who’s Matt Smith is heading to America after landing his first Hollywood film role alongside actresses Eva Mendes and Christina Hendricks.

Matt, 30, will play the male lead in the project in How To Catch A Monster, which also signals his ambitions to move into film and leave Doctor Who.

The film, directed by hearthrob Ryan Gosling, is centred around a dream-like landscape of a disappearing city, and follows a single mother named Billy who finds herself in a gloomy fantasy underworld.

Her teenage son discovers a secret path leading to an underwater town, which they must investigate in order to save their family.

Matt is likely to do more and more films in the coming years, and one BBC source suggested this role was “the beginning of the end” of his time as Doctor Who.

The BBC has today moved to play down fans’ fears that this movie meant Matt had already quit the show.

A Doctor Who spokesman said: “As in previous years Matt is taking advantage of a gap in the Doctor Who production schedule to take on another project. It’s the 50th year of Doctor Who and Matt is committed to the show. He will be around for a while yet.”

Matt first revealed plans to crack Hollywood in the Mirror in June 2011. At the time he said: “I’m going over to Los Angeles this week to dip my head in the pond.

“I am going to be having loads of meetings with film people and that sort of stuff.

“I have a lot of ambitions. I would like one day to direct and I just want to keep doing quality work. LA is kinda groovy - I really like it out there.”

More recently he has admitted that he would leave the Timelord role soon. He has been doing it since 2009 but would be impossible to stay in the role for seven years like Tom Baker did in the 70s, with the extra pressure today’s high-octane episodes bring.

Matt said: “I don’t think you can sustain it. Tom Baker did it in different circumstances.

“I couldn’t do this for seven years. I’d be run into the ground.”

Show producers are said to be working on ideas for the next Doctor regeneration, and Matt could bow out in the 2013 Christmas special or early next year.

Boss Steven Moffat is also thought to be close to completing a script which will see the Doctor needing the assistance of all his TARDIS predecessors for the 50th anniversary special, set to be broadcast in November.