[R: Interesting choice of words, wasn't it. I for one found RA's performance to be startlingly sublime - he painted the picture of a lovingly moral family man, who was also a uniquely talented artist]
November 19, 2011
Another New Fanvid (9min of heaven) + Narration: Eye of the Tiger Fanvid + Past Post Jan 2011 (see below link)
November 15, 2011
Jul 2011 Interview + RA Reads TS Eliot + Latest Tweet from Eric + New Report from Eric Vespe from The Hobbit Set + Casting Fantasy: Two New Upcoming Series
Telegraph Interview By Jasper Rees...22 Jul 2011
Is there a harder hard man? A more dastardly villain? He incarnates SAS author Chris Ryan in the Sky series Strike Back, was Robin Hood’s scowling nemesis Guy of Gisborne, and infamously revealed himself as a ruthless killer - not nice Lucas North but nasty John Bateman - in the most recent series of the BBC’s Spooks. And now he’s playing a cold-hearted Nazi infiltrator in the much anticipated whizzbangy film version of Captain America.
In person, of course, Richard Armitage turns out to be the softest pussycat. Not to look at, of course. He’s six foot something and mostly consists of granite and stubble. But the voice is on the quiet side, and he radiates an air of proper humility. So why is he never Mr Nice on screen?
“I suppose I’m a bit mean. My face on camera doesn’t lend itself to happy nice guys. I think it’s just that my bone structure looks menacing. I don’t smile that often.”
He duly smiles, enchantingly, at the absurdity of the gap between image and reality. “Somebody asked me after I’d done all that training for Strike Back, 'Could you go out and work with the SAS?’ I thought, what a ridiculous question. It’s about replicating a look.”
He even thinks he may qualify as a wimp. In Captain America: The First Avenger, the latest cinematic take on a Marvel Comics superhero, Armitage is once more rotten to the core. He plays Heinz Kruger, a Teutonic assassin who at one point is involved in a super-macho underwater tussle. Only one problem.
“I am just not a water baby. I can swim but I just don’t. Everyone else is jumping in and I’ll go, ’You know what? I’ll just stand on the side.’
“I did four weeks of scuba training for the sequence and made myself do fifty lengths every day. Then we were at the bottom of a tank and there was ten metres above you.” All 15 or 16 stone of him shudders at the memory of the moment the divers confiscated his goggles and breathing line. “They had put a microphone in the water so you could hear them say, 'Just waiting for the bubbles to clear.’ I’m at the bottom of the tank thinking, I’ve taken a deep breath but I haven’t got enough air. When they asked me to do it again I was sitting in the dressing room crying, 'I can’t!’”
In another scene they put him in an empty box within a container filled with water. “They wanted to smash a window and the water rush in quickly. They’d put all the safety things in place but you can’t fool the brain: you have a fight-or-flight mechanism that you can’t control. I smashed the roof off.”
...
After drama school he guessed his future was in theatre. Spear-carrying at the RSC cured him of that assumption. He understudied in one hatchet-faced tragedy that went on tour. “We limped around and I saw audiences being tortured by our production. That put me off. I’m not much of a show-off. I don’t really go after that kind of applause.”Screen acting didn’t go much better until one day he went into an audition for the BBC drama Sparkhouse in character as a grouchy Northern farmer. “It came out of real frustration of not getting anything. Normally I’d go in with my hair all brushed and polished. It was the first time I’ve played a character over four episodes with an arc.”
His gruff mill-owner in Mrs Gaskell’s North and South followed, as did his betrothal to Dawn French in The Vicar of Dibley. He’s even played Monet in a drama doc.
But there’s no getting round his physique. He got Strike Back, he says, because “somebody must have turned it down. I thought, this is your bog-standard boys-with-toys story. The challenge was to find the human interest inside a war machine story.”
When Spooks came round, he’d not seen more than a few episodes of the first series. “They hadn’t written the part. They wanted to bring in a character who had quite a complicated back story so they could then feed off that.” Even Armitage was surprised by the sudden stripping away of Lucas North’s carapace. “They kept it from me at the end that he did know there was a bomb in the bag. There’s me thinking that he’s done a good thing.”
One day he’d like to have a go at ultimate baddie Richard III. For the next two years Armitage will be flying back and forth to New Zealand to play a dwarf in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Not a small dwarf, mind. “I’m carrying 20 kilos of costume and weights so I’m doing load of lower back and leg exercises.”
[ricrar: No, no...we'd never want him to be cast as the guy who takes off his shirt *cough,cough*;]
See recent Richard III comment at the Nov 23, 2009 post at this blog...
RECENT TWEET from EricVespe
@merilyn066 Don't know if they will allow me to publish some of the photos of him, but so far they've let me run everything I've submitted
14 Nov
@Merilyn
@EricVespe I will keep everything crossed Eric for a "little" snippet of RA, thanks again.
14 Nov
THE HOBBIT NEWS: Latest Report from embedded reporter Eric Vespe on The Hobbit set(see link below) including tweets his blog post generated...(read from bottom up):
EricVespeEric Vespe
@KristAraujo I have met Richard, but I haven't had the chance to tell him about the shocking numbers of his fans on Twitter. 10 minutes agomerilyn066Merilyn
@EricVespe WOW....amazing and brilliant Eric, thanks so much for keeping us updated.....hum....no Thorin sightings yet? 14 Nov
EricVespe
@merilyn066 Soon! 14 Nov
merilyn066
@EricVespe woohoo.....promise? lol
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/51948
Starz premium channel, in partnership with BBC Worldwide, have the following two new series in development. IMO RA could star in either one of them. See new poll asking your preference to see RA in a major role.
The first currently has the title 'Harem'. It will be a 6hr series in the 'sword and sandal' genre. The story is based on Haseki Hurrem(Suleiman), Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and his politcally powerful wife, Roxelana.
http://www.hitfix.com/articles/starz-kicks-off-reign-of-women-with-new-sword-and-sandal-series-harem
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/starz-ottoman-empire-series-260308
Also in development is ‘DaVinci’s Demons’(historical fantasy genre) - an 8 part series giving a different approach to the Renaissance man, Leonardo DaVinci
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci's_Demons
http://screenrant.com/starz-da-vinci-demons-david-goyer-yman-137678/
DaVinci is described not only as an artist but also a swordsman, idealist, lover, etc...
Definitely seems to be a daVinci revival - which came first - the upcoming series, books or the newly discovered paintings? http://artinfo.com/news/story/750715/the-male-mona-lisa-art-historian-martin-kemp-on-leonardo-da-vincis-mysterious-salvator-mundi/?utm_source=nlda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
November 13, 2011
This & That Tues + Wedding Wrap-up Mon + Jan 25, 2010 Interview
How did I miss this before today?? It's from the Radio Times Apr 29 - May 5, 2006..found in RA Central's library (see link below)
Me, a sex god? Asks Spooks star By Allison Pearson on 25th January 2010
Some rakish TV turns have earnt Spooks star Richard Armitage an army of female fans. ALLISON PEARSON went to see what all the fuss is about - and found him squirming with embarrassment.
How many women can you take to a Richard Armitage interview? Earlier this year, when I paid homage to the actor in my Daily Mail column, so many readers volunteered to come along and 'hold the microphone' that if I ever met Richard I would have had to rent the Royal Albert Hall to squeeze us all in.
'For me, his voice is like Bournville chocolate', sighed one correspondent. 'My hero', claimed several hundred others. One lady confessed she had got a dog just so she could exercise it in the park where she thought she had spotted Richard Armitage jogging. Ye gods. And there was me thinking he was mine, and mine alone.
It's a common delusion. Last Valentine's Day, Richard Armitage beat international stars such as Johnny Depp and Daniel Craig to become the winner of the Romantic Novelists' Sexiest Thing on Two Legs award.
No wonder. With his chiselled profile, manly intensity and velvety Northern baritone, the man is a god.
It was back in November 2004, that a relatively unknown 34-year-old from Leicester appeared on our screens as the tall, dark and thrillingly proud Victorian mill-owner John Thornton in Elizabeth Gaskell's North And South.
Within hours, the BBC's message board collapsed under the crush of breathless admirers.
Armitage's popularity spread..A website was set up in his honour
http://www.richardarmitagecentral.co.uk/
Richard's fans have remained deeply, in some cases quite barmily, loyal. Although many of us found it hard to stomach his murder of poor Maid Marion when he played the sensually sadistic Sir Guy of Gisborne in Robin Hood. Speaking personally, it was a blow that Armitage's MI5 agent, Lucas North, went through an entire series of BBC1's Spooks without a single smouldering look, let alone a decent love interest.
Is Richard Armitage a reluctant Love God? In truth, would this superb actor rather play Richard The Third at Stratford than have besotted women sending him [gifts]? On a warm, late-summer's day I was sent to south-east London, to the set of the new series of Spooks, to find out..
So, Mr Love God, how would you describe your own romantic history?
He laughs nervously. 'Er, sparse.'
'OK, frugal,' he tries again.
FRUGAL? That's even worse!
'Sparing. Cautious. Careful,' he says carefully. When he looks at me, those pale blue eyes are glinting with merriment.
Did you know?
At the age of 17, Richard ran away to Budapest to join the circus..in order to gain his Equity card
Hell's bells, man. A sparing, frugal, careful romantic history. It's not very Sexiest Man on Two Legs, is it?
'No, it's just quite old-fashioned, that's all,' he says. 'I don't put it about. Never have. I'm a late developer in everything. I have a fast mind and fast metabolism, and I'm an intense worker, but in terms of life development I'm way behind.'
Not physically, though. In the summer he was 14, Richard shot up to six feet two over the school holidays. It was a shock. Suddenly, he was treated like a man. 'I've never been that cute kid that was forgiven for being naughty.'
Although he looked like an adult, inside he felt like a little boy. I think, to an extent, I still do. I'm ten years behind, but I'm finally growing into myself now,' he says.
Casting directors seem to agree. The work is flooding in. After the final scene of Spooks is in the can, he's off to South Africa to film Strike Back, a six-part SAS drama for Sky, in which he will play a traumatised soldier returning from Iraq.
'I feel like I'm clinging onto a ride that's getting a little bit fast and I daren't let go for a second.'
He admits ruefully that the live-in girlfriend he mentioned in previous interviews has recently moved out. A casualty, he implies, of such a fast-paced professional life.
Sitting opposite me in the lunchtime sunshine, with the film crew moving gear around us, he wears a black, close-fitting shirt over dark jeans. The stone he shed to play the part of Lucas North, recently returned from eight years in a Russian prison, made that imposing face appear more aquiline than ever.
He looked a bit peaky for my liking. Half the women in the country probably wanted to reach inside the telly and pull him out to give him a hotpot.
For this new series of Spooks, he has put some of the weight back on. He looks burnished and indecently handsome, although in his head he says he's still the geeky Richard that his mates got round to lay their laminate flooring when he was between acting jobs, which he was for so many years.
You know, I wonder if being a late starter isn't the key to Armitage's vast appeal. By the time we first clapped eyes on him as John Thornton, he was already a proper grown man, in sharp contrast to all those snub-nosed pretty boys who pass for movie stars these days. Richard Armitage reminds you of those calm, classic leading men of the 1940s and 1950s - the men with the depths below the still waters.
Lately, Richard has issued an apology to the Armitage Army for appearing to ridicule his more obsessive fans. I reckon he is grateful for their support..It's just that, like the nicely brought up lad he is, he finds all the attention a bit embarrassing.. It can't be easy for this faintly old-fashioned Northern bloke to find he is male totty. Status based on good looks feels undeserved, and Armitage is big on needing to earn what you get. Some of the vanity of his profession makes him wince. For example, he has a horror of walking down the red carpet.
He says he took the Tube to his first film premiere and was amazed to come round the corner in Leicester Square wearing his tux and discover that you were supposed to arrive by car.
'I don't think actors need to go on pedestals. I don't buy it,' he says. 'I think it's a weird thing. It's like you become someone else, like stepping into another universe.'
[Ricrar: I totally agree with RA about not putting all other actors on pedestals and I never have - if that other guy would just step down, I think our fav actor would fit quite well on one;]
(article continued) It's an odd complaint coming from an actor, whose job is pretending. But then Armitage has pretty ambivalent feelings about acting. He gestures at the bustle of activity going on all around us.
'I look at our crew and I sometimes envy all of them - I wish I was a focus puller or a lighting technician. Part of me can't work out why I'm still the gimp. I actually want to be the puppet master.'
There isn't a whiff of showbusiness in his background - he comes from a long line of miners and mill-workers. His parents were very conservative.
'My mum will not speak above a low whisper in public because she doesn't want to draw attention to herself,' he says. As a teenager, he rebelled against all that quiet conformity. 'I used to be angry at my parents for being like that. I spent a long time buying bright orange trousers, then regretting it and never wearing them.'
.. Richard took tap dancing classes from the age of four to correct pigeon toes.
He excelled at the cello and played in the Leicestershire youth orchestra..
Aged 22, he enrolled at drama school. It is at this point that he casually drops into the conversation that his best dance was the Argentinian Tango. Omigod. The thought of Richard Armitage doing the tango is too much to bear.. 'Go on, do some dancing for me. Pleeeaase.'
'You must be joking,' he says, that soothing baritone rising a few notes in protest.
But you'd be perfect on Strictly Come Dancing, I insist.
'One thing I can promise you is that you'll never see Richard Armitage on Strictly Come Dancing.' Why? 'Because Richard Armitage will never appear as Richard Armitage on TV.'
And there we have the conundrum. The all-singing, all-dancing star who hates the spotlight for its own sake.
The same man who was voted most desirable man in BBC drama is also the man who treated his online fans to a quotation from Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Scientists.
'To live and let live, without clamour for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart - this is the sanity and perfection of living.'
Quite a spiritual man, our Mr Armitage on the quiet. We were right to think he was a perfect gentleman. Not just a great looking man, but a good one too. He promises me that, this time, he has a serious romantic interest in Spooks.
'It's one of those affairs where Lucas knows he shouldn't be there. It's the kind of relationship that explodes and then there's the fallout.' Heaven.
Entire article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1218824/Me-sex-god-Spooks-star-Richard-Armitage-army-female-fans.html#ixzz1dggrMyz
November 7, 2011
Real Life Interruptus..back on Sat Folks:) + Hobbit or Elvish Name? + New GoG Fanvid + Tuxedo Tuesday
Hobbit/Elvish Name Generator:
Have you as yet received your Hobbit and Elvish names? Which do you prefer? http://chriswetherell.com/hobbit/ I'll go with my temporary Hobbit name - Daisy Sandybanks of Frogmorton :) Temporary because if there are no laws against bigamy in Middle Earth, making plans to become Mrs Thorin Oakenshield:) *what in the world is she sniffing..winks*
You'll understand perfectly why I've chosen the hobbit name when told my Elvish name -- Idril Telemnar.
Just discovered the following group, which qualifies IMO as superior entertainment (same as our fav actor), because they're not only exceptionally talented but provide the bonus of delicious eye candy treat as well..
Do black cravat and tails qualify as a tuxedo? If so, John Thornton was formal 24/7..
German fan provides handsome November Calendar...
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