Joe Alwyn’s Neighbors Called Police on Him as Kid When He Pranked Them with Blood-Soaked Letter

Joe Alwyn was a prankster as a kid.

The Brutalist actor, 33, revealed on The Drew Barrymore Show that he once pulled a prank on his neighbors that landed him and his older brother a visit from police officers. When asked about the “funniest thing” someone has “yelled” at him, Alwyn detailed the story.

“When I was about 8 years old I thought it would be a fun idea to prank the neighbors. And I wrote some letters. They were pranky but they were of the threatening-pranky kind, and they were dipped in fake blood from a toy store.”

Alwyn then shared that he “ran up and down the road” with his brother and put the letters in their neighbor’s mailboxes. He joked, “Prank done, achieved! Great!” However, Alwyn said it wasn’t so simple after that, as a neighbor called his parents asking about the letter and things escalated.

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“The street … was quickly filled with the entire neighborhood in tears and screaming and worried and, understandably, they had called the police and Scotland Yard was on its way,” he recalled. “Police cars turned up on the road cause they’ve got a killer to catch!”

“By this point I’m thinking I’m going to jail,” he continued. “About three policemen came into the house, we had to confess to our crime, and they stood over me and my brother, and because he’s 18 months older … he was the one that took the brunt of it.”

The actor added, “I don’t remember what the policeman yelled at me but they yelled.”

Earlier this week, the Kinds of Kindness star made his first-ever appearance on a late-night talk show, Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote his new film The Brutalist, where he plays the son of wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). 

On the show, Meyers, 51, praised Alwyn’s performance in the film — which also stars Adrien Brody as a Hungarian Jewish architect — before asking him how he was “feeling so far” on his first appearance on a late-night talk show. 

“Awful,” responded Alwyn, causing the audience to laugh. He then paused and smiled before telling Meyers, “No, it’s great. I’m joking.”

Alwyn has primarily kept his private life and romance out of the spotlight over the years. Following his high-profile breakup with Taylor Swift after six years of dating, a source told PEOPLE that Alwyn was “doing well” and was “focused on work,” splitting his time between “London and N.Y.C.”

Speaking about how he deals with the spotlight, he told The Guardian in a recent interview that he tries to “focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course.”

The Brutalist is in theaters now.