Richard Armitage : Biography

Richard Armitage was born in Leicester on 22nd August 1971, the second son of Margaret, a secretary, and John, an engineer. He grew up in a village outside the city, and has described himself as a somewhat solitary child who developed a “vivid imagination” through his passionate enjoyment of reading. Childhood favourites included The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. [1]

At the age of fourteen he transferred from a local state middle school, Brockington College, to Pattison’s Dancing Academy in Coventry (now Pattison College), an independent boarding school specialising in Performing Arts. The school arranged regular theatre visits, and it was here, watching a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, that he discovered an interest in acting: “I remember having that moment of finally understanding what was going on. They were having such a good time and the audience was having such a good time and I just thought that was where I wanted to be. I remember thinking they were doing something they loved and they were getting paid for it”. [2]

Pattison’s introduced him to the demands and obligations of an acting career: "It... instilled me with a discipline that has stood me in good stead - never to be late, to know your lines and to be professional." It gave its pupils opportunities to appear in local amateur and professional productions, and by the time Richard left school at 17, he had already appeared in Showboat, Half a Sixpence, as Bacchus in Orpheus and the Underworld and in The Hobbit at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham. [3]

After leaving school, Richard joined The Second Generation, a physical theatre group, working for eight weeks in a show called Allow London at the Nachtcircus in Budapest. Here he “threw hoola hoops to a skateboarding Russian and held ladders for [a] juggling act…did guide roping for the trapeze, and…a weird kind of UV glow-in-the-dark mime illusion thing”. [4] Though he later described “sleeping next to the elephants” as “a low point in show business”, it was sufficient to gain him his Equity card, a pre-requisite at the time for entry to the profession. [1]

Returning to the UK, he embarked on a career in musical theatre, working as assistant choreographer to Kenn Oldfield and appearing in the West End and on tour in a series of musicals including 42nd Street, My One and Only, Nine, Mr Wonderful, Annie Get your Gun and Cats.

By 1995, inspired in part by seeing Adrian Noble’s classic 1994 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford, he was laying the foundations of an acting career, appearing at the Actors’ Centre’s Tristram Bates Theatre as Macliesh in Willis Hall’s The Long and the Short and the Tall, and at the Old School Manchester as Henry in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing, Flan in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation and Biff in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. He was also studying for a Society of British Fight Directors qualification.

This was the year that Richard enrolled on a three-year Acting course at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). Here he appeared in student productions including Pericles as Antiochus the Great, David Copperfield as Uriah Heep, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart as Felix, and as Buscher in Manfred Karge’s metaphorical drama of unemployment The Conquest of the South Pole.

In his final year at LAMDA, an advert on the college notice board for film extras led to his first experience of acting in a feature film: a one-line role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It was a humble, though interesting, entry into film: “I felt very nervous saying my line - I had practised it for three weeks… I actually ended up as a computer graphic in the film, I think”. [4] Despite being unidentifiable on screen, he found himself besieged by Star Wars fans when touring Japan with the RSC two years later.

Graduating in the summer of 1998, he immediately joined the cast of Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, having already appeared at the Edinburgh Festival as Cliff in William Mastrosimone’s two-hander The Woolgatherer, and as Henry in Tom Stoppard’s romantic comedy The Real Thing. Small parts in the films This Year’s Love and Franc Roddam’s Cleopatra followed. After appearing in Dylan Ritson’s A Light Swell at the Bridewell Theatre, London, he returned to the Birmingham Rep in February 1999 to play Young Richie in Fay Weldon’s play The Four Alice Bakers, an exploration of the implications of human cloning.

An eighteen month engagement with the Royal Shakespeare Company followed. He appeared first in the role of Angus in Gregory Doran’s highly acclaimed production of Macbeth. After seasons at the Swan in Stratford and the Young Vic in London between November 1999 and June 2000, Macbeth toured overseas in the summer of 2000 before being filmed. He then took the more substantial role of Delio in John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. This opened in November 2000 at the Barbican Theatre, London, transferring to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford in February 2001.

The following year, Richard appeared in an Operating Theatre/Actors’ Centre production of Annie Lee at the Tristan Bates Theatre.

But it was in TV that his career started to take off. His first television appearances had come while he was still working in musical theatre. By the mid 1990’s he had appeared in an episode of Boon (as “Man in pub”), Children in Need, The Den (a children’s programme), The Late Show (for Radio Telefis Eireann) and the BBC science and technology programme Tomorrow’s World. There was a later appearance (as “Armed police officer”) in an episode of Spooks in 2002 (series 1, episode 4).

His first named TV roles came at the end of 2001, when he appeared in two BBC medical dramas. He played locum Dr Tom Steele in two episodes of Doctors, and then Craig, boyfriend of Dr Lara Stone, in an episode of Casualty.

By the following spring, he was in Yorkshire filming Sparkhouse for the BBC, a modern interpretation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. It was his first major TV role – he played John Standring, the shy farmhand who was in love with the heroine, Carol. Sparkhouse was broadcast in September 2002.

It was swiftly followed a very different role in a high-profile drama series on ITV. In February and March 2003, he was seen in the final series of Cold Feet as Lee Richards, the good-looking lifeguard with an eye for the ladies.

And then in the summer of the same year came another recurring role in a big ITV drama series – Capt Ian Macalwain in the second series of the SAS drama, Ultimate Force.

A significant role in another ITV drama series came next. He played the probation officer partner of a sex therapist in Kay Mellor’s six part drama about sexual relationships, Between the Sheets. The series dealt frankly with sex and included a number of sex scenes, some of them involving Richard Armitage and Julie Graham. It was broadcast in November and December 2003.

In 2004, he was seen in Juliet McKoen’s small-budget but award-winning film, Frozen. It was his biggest film role to date - he played Steven, a security guard helping Kath (Shirley Henderson) to investigate the disappearance of her sister.

In the spring and summer of 2004, he filmed his first leading role on television, that of mill-owner John Thornton in the BBC’s adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 19th century novel, North and South. His co-star was former EastEnders and My Family actress Daniela Denby-Ashe. It was to prove his breakthrough role. It was a high-quality production and when it was shown in November and December 2004, it was well received by the critics and got larger audiences than might have been expected for an adaptation of a Gaskell novel. His sensitive portrayal of the vulnerabilities of the outwardly strong mill-owner won him legions of fans and a reputation as a heart-throb. It also brought him to the attention of casting directors as a potential leading man.

His next two appearances on TV had been filmed before North and South was broadcast. They were an appearance in an episode of the BBC detective series, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and a supporting role as a “misogynist cad” in ITV’s adaptation of Francis Iles' murder mystery, Malice Aforethought (both shown in spring 2005). [5]

After North and South was broadcast, larger roles came his way. In September and October 2005, he played Dr Alec Track, the leader of a team of helicopter emergency doctors in ITV’s series, The Golden Hour.

In the BBC’s Shakespeare Retold series of stories based on Shakespeare plays, he returned to Macbeth, this time playing the more important role of Macduff. This was seen in November 2005.

In spring 2006 came another leading role, this time as painter Claude Monet in the BBC series The Impressionists.

His next role, although not the lead, brought him a far wider audience and yet more fans. He played the evil Sir Guy of Gisborne in the BBC’s major drama series for the autumn of 2006, Robin Hood. The black leather-clad Gisborne murdered and tortured as if it was all in a day’s work, and then went off to woo Marian. It was a performance that drew appreciative comments from female bloggers across the Internet, but also praise from critics who were divided about the series as a whole. The series has been sold to several other countries including the USA, Canada and Australia, where it was broadcast in spring 2007.

Robin Hood gave him the opportunity to record his first audiobooks – four stories based on the first four episodes of the series. Since then, he has recorded an audiobook of Bernard Cornwell's The Lords of the North for The Audiobook Collection, released in July 2007.

While Robin Hood was running, he was also seen on the BBC channel CBeebies, reading five bedtime stories for young children.

In the six months between the filming of series 1 and 2 of Robin Hood, Richard Armitage filmed several more TV programmes. At Christmas 2006 he appeared in the last two episodes of The Vicar of Dibley, playing Dawn French’s husband-to-be. The first of the two episodes had the largest Christmas Day audience that year. He was then seen as Ricky Deeming, the leader of a 1960s biker gang in George Gently, a BBC detective drama starring Martin Shaw that was shown in April 2007.

In the BBC Four drama Miss Marie Lloyd - Queen of the Music Hall, broadcast in May 2007, he played Percy Courtenay, Marie Lloyd's first husband, opposite Jessie Wallace. He was later seen in a Miss Marple story called Ordeal by Innocence, first broadcast in Canada in June 2007, and later shown in the USA and the UK.

Empire's Children, a six part documentary series for Channel 4 about the British Empire, marked his first work as a narrator for a TV programme. It was shown in July and August 2007.

In the autumn of 2007 came his first radio work. In October, he read from the letters of the former Poet Laureate in The Ted Hughes Letters on BBC Radio 4, and in November he was one of the readers in a programme for BBC Radio 2 about the experiences of non-combatants in wartime, A War Less Ordinary.

The second series of Robin Hood was shown in the UK on BBC One in the autumn of 2007, and it will be seen around the world in 2008.

Earlier this year, Richard spent several months filming Spooks, the BBC's popular and long-running spy series. He joined the cast for the seventh series as MI5 officer Lucas North. This is expected to be shown on the BBC in autumn 2008.

He has now returned to Hungary to film the third series of Robin Hood.

Sources

[1] The Times, 13th April 2005
[2] 'vivid' magazine, Spring 2005 (page 1, page 2, picture)
[3] Coventry Evening Telegraph, 12th November 1999
[4] Eastern Daily Press, 5th February 2005
[5] Express and Star, 1st April 2005