Pool pals: Allen says he plays pool with his on-screen tormentor, Iwan Rheon, to take their minds off tough days at the office.

The British actor, who plays the twisted and broken Theon Greyjoy — aka Reek — was visiting the country in 2012 for the Supanova pop culture conventions when he was bailed up in a Perth coffee shop “in the middle of nowhere” by none other than the London Olympics bound Australian rowing team, who were training nearby and revealed themselves to be huge fans.

“How mad is the scale of the show that I can just stop at this tiny little coffee shop in the middle of nowhere and that happened?”, he says now, still incredulous. “For me, that was when I grasped it.”

Conventions attract the true fans, says Allen, but he says it’s more about their common experience rather than any of the individual guests.

“Really, the thing about those conventions is that we’re secondary to it,” says Allen. “Even though we are the stars who have been brought in, it’s not actually about us. It’s about those people having a reunion every year. I’m not being patronising in any way — but it’s their thing, it’s not really ours.”

Alfie Allen as Theon Greyjoy, aka Reek, in a scene from season five of Game of Thrones.Source:Supplied

Since its debut five years ago, Game Of Thrones has become a global television phenomenon, with each of the five seasons so far bigger than the last. And with the biggest cliffhanger yet ending the last season — is Jon Snow dead or not? — anticipation for Season six has reached a fever pitch ahead of the first episode airing on April 25.

Allen certainly had no inkling of the juggernaut it would become. Until he was cast as Theon, the son of UK actor and TV personality Keith Allen (and sister of pop star Lily), had only had minor parts in films such as Elizabeth, Atonement and The Other Boleyn Girl. And even though the George R.R. Martin fantasy books on which the show was based had a cult following, it was the TV pedigree of US network HBO (The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood) that told Allen it would be a quality offering.

“When I got the part in the show, I was watching The Wire,” he says. “So to be in an HBO mega-show was not a realistic prospect to me at all. I always knew it was going to get attention because it was HBO and I thought it would be huge in America but the worldwide appeal it now has is just like nothing ever before.”

If there’s one thing GoT fans have become used to, it’s to expect the unexpected. The author — and show-runners Dan Weiss and David Benioff — have no issue with killing off major players, often brutally, inspiring internet memes such as: Why doesn’t George R.R. Martin use Twitter? Because he killed off all 140 characters. And (spoiler alert!) it seems that the noble Stark family fares worse than most.

Think patriarch Ned Stark losing his head at the end of season one, son and heir Robb being used as a human pincushion in the infamous Red Wedding, and bastard child Jon Snow betrayed and murdered by his Nights Watch brothers in last year’s shocking finale.

So while Allen’s character is technically one of the Iron Born from House Greyjoy, he was raised as a Stark, so is understandably as nervous as anyone when he receives the scripts for the coming season, not knowing whether Theon will survive it.

“There was a prank played on me in Series 2 when I was constantly asking David and Dan whether I was going to die or not and they gave me a fake script and told me I was going to die,” Allen recalls with a laugh.

“And I believed them — and I thought it was a good way to go. I’m sure two or three years down the line I would have been crying going ‘why am I not part of this amazing show still’. But now there is a sense of trepidation every season — but I am a fan too so I cannot wait to read the script.”

Game Of Thrones shoots for about five months, usually between July and November, and doesn’t air until April of the following year, given even those closest to it plenty of time to forget the often labyrinthine plot twists as the great Houses battle to rule Westeros from the Iron Throne.

“It’s a long time from when I get the script to when it’s edited and on the telly and there is still something I forget about,” Allen admits. “I will be sitting there watching it with friends and go ‘whoa’ — and they will be like ‘you’re in the show, mate — why is this shocking you?’. Some things definitely still surprise me. I’ll be honest though — I don’t like watching myself on screen, like a lot of people. People will tell me ‘you’re so amazing in the show — but your scenes are so hard to watch’.”

Tough days: some of Alfie Allen’s hardest scenes to stomach have been with Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark in Game Of Thrones.Source:Supplied

That’s putting it mildly. Since his introduction in the very first episode, Theon’s path has been tougher than most. The vain, insecure one-time ladies’ man has done terrible things — he turned on the family that raised him and once burned two innocent children to save face and win respect from his men — but has had even more terrible things done to him.

Since being captured by the sadistic Ramsay Bolton, he been tortured, castrated, psychologically broken, and forced to watch the rape of his adopted sister, Sansa.

“I wouldn’t say he is any more or less complex than any of the other characters in the show but he is one of the more human characters in the show in that he makes mistakes,” Allen says.

“In the real world we all make mistakes. It’s not something that you ever want to really relate to but it’s a fact of life that we all mess up sometimes and that’s what Theon/Reek does on a regular basis.”

Pool pals: Allen says he plays pool with his on-screen tormentor, Iwan Rheon, to take their minds off tough days at the office.Source:Supplied

Ramsay Bolton might be the architect of much of Theon’s pain, but Allen says he’s tight with the man who plays him, Iwan Rheon, and there are certainly no hard feelings after what were some very challenging days on set.

“We would just go out and play pool,” says Allen. “We played a LOT of pool, me and Iwan. It’s not something we would talk about at the end of the day — we wouldn’t go ‘what do you think about that? How did you feel?’ We just left it. I don’t want to put words in his mouth but you wouldn’t want to have any kind of empathy or sympathy for a character like that otherwise that could creep into your own psyche and affect the way you play it.”

Theon was last seen leaping from the ramparts of Winterfell Castle with Sansa Stark at the end of season five.

Allen is tight-lipped as to what happens in Season 6 (other than to say it’s “bloody brilliant”), but from the trailers we have seen so far, it’s clear they both survived the fall. Whether he makes it alive to the end of the season, however, is another matter entirely.

Even the fans of the books have no idea, given that the TV show has now overtaken the notoriously slow author, and will venture off into unknown territory this season. Should the worst come to worst however, he’s been chipping away at a career away from Game Of Thrones, playing a Russian mobster in the Keanu Reeves action hit John Wick and touring a stage production of Equus around his native UK. Live or die, he’s not afraid of being typecast.

“I’m just happy to be working — honestly and from the bottom of my heart,” he says of his long-term career goals.

“Maybe I should have more of a game plan but to me I am obviously not that person. I am not Reek, I am not Theon and I look quite different in the show from how I look in real life. I think I have been a little bit lucky in that respect.

“It’s such a jump away from me as a person and I would like to think I have enough range as an actor that I could go and do other stuff and be unrecognisable.”

Game of Thrones Season five is out now on DVD/Blu-ray. Season six airs exclusively on Foxtel Showcase from April 25.