Richard Armitage is a man who maddens women. He may also be a genius who has discovered the secret of transmitting pheromones through the small screen. How else to explain that, within hours of the 34-year-old actor’s first appearance in the BBC’s North and South, enamoured fans had crashed the message board of the programme’s website? When the BBC was forced to shut it down, the ladies were thwarted but undeterred. They established www.thearmitagearmy.co.uk, where the like-minded could loosen imaginary stays as they swapped swooning stories, shared verse or worse. Take this, from the resident laureate: “When it became quite clear/Richard was the hottest guy in a cravat/There’s been casualties from ovaries exploding.” Andrew Motion, eat yer heart out.
I had thought that Armitage fever might be confined to middle England. However, on learning I’d interviewed him, otherwise level-headed female friends presented flushed-cheek and bright-eyed symptoms. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. But he is gorgeous,” cried the most frenzied. “Is he tall?” (She is 5ft 11in.) When informed that he is 6ft 2in and single, she continued: “Listen, do you think it would be totally unprofessional for you to telephone him pretending you had more questions, but actually to ask him if he’d go out on a date with me?” Given such hysteria, it is with some trepidation that one approaches meeting Armitage in a public place. Luckily, the cafe of the National Film Theatre, midweek, mid-afternoon, midway through a French new-wave season, is the perfect place for a small-screen demigod to go undetected among the snaggle-toothed mortals. And, divested of a top hat and muttonchops, Armitage does not swagger and smoulder as he did as Elizabeth Gaskell’s self-made mill-owner, John Thornton. He is undeniably tall, dark and handsome. His glacially blue-grey eyes are, well, piercing; his teeth perfect, as befits his status as an up-and-coming celebrity. However, in modern-day mufti — jeans, an arguably too-tight shirt, a leather jacket and slicked-down hair — he appears what he is, a good-looking Leicestershire lad, the son of an engineer and a school secretary, who has made a success of himself. And one who is as bemused as he is amused and enthused by the momentum a Sunday-night costume drama gave his career.
“It’s been almost two years, but they still send me presents,” he reveals, looking, for a flicker of a moment, alarmed. Then he recovers himself, adding smoothly: “But, really, I’m very appreciative. Up to that point I had never had a review, so it was interesting to see how people received my work. I try to be quite a detailed actor. People were really picking up on that. Even if it was just a flicker of the eye or something, they got it.” Bless him, that will have been one of those explosive glances that led to burst ovaries and comparisons with Colin Firth’s Darcy.
Armitage may have become a sensation overnight, but he had been a jobbing actor since the age of 17, when he ran off to join a circus in Budapest. Clowning secured him an Equity card, then he returned to Britain to be a musicals hoofer. By 21, however, he was worried that while his lungs and hamstrings were being stretched, his brain was not. In Stratford, watching Adrian Noble’s classic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he had an epiphany. “It was the first time I’d seen the audience having as much fun as the actors,” he recalls. He applied to Lamda, after which he had seasons carrying spears at Birmingham Rep and the RSC before he made the TV actor’s rites of passage through Doctors and Casualty. Bigger parts followed in Sparkhorse, Between the Sheets and Cold Feet.
When his agent mentioned that the BBC was to adapt Mrs Gaskell’s North and South, he dutifully bought the book. “Within the first pages, I thought, ‘I’m right for this person and for this role’,” he says. But the casting director was less certain. They did not invite him back for six weeks. “There was a point when I thought I should just forget about it, but I kept on going back to the book. It had to do with my family heritage. My roots are in that part of the country and that kind of industry. My grandmother was a weaver. Others were coal miners. I know the landscape. And I knew the John Thornton type.”
The female response took him by surprise. “I’ve always thought that it can’t be me they’re responding to, it’s the character. It’s Elizabeth Gaskell they should be sending presents to,” he adds hopefully — but not entirely convincingly. “We live in a sexually liberated society and I can understand how people crave the emotional and physical restraint of that period.”
Armitage’s army of fans will be delighted that “the hottest guy in a cravat” can again be seen in one from today. In BBC1’s The Impressionists, he stars as Claude Monet. The piece was originally conceived as a drama-documentary, but the BBC arts team eventually decided to scythe out the boring explanations and stick to a lushly orchestrated and illustrated narrative. Filming was fun, in Paris, Provence and even Monet’s garden at Giverny. It’s chocolate-boxy, but, in its post-Antiques Roadshow slot, will probably teach far more people something about art history than a BBC4 documentary would. Playing Monet from 19 to 58 takes Armitage through myriad facial hairstyles. His fans may carp. “I stopped looking at the website after everyone wrote in to say how much they’d hated my moustache in Malice Aforethought. I’ve got to get on with things,” he says.
For the moment, this means playing bad, as Robin Hood’s nemesis, Guy of Gisborne.
Filming has just started outside Budapest and will go on until the autumn. Written by Dominic Minghella, the BBC’s big-budgeted first stab at men in tights is, reveals Armitage, rich with contemporary reference: much is made of Hood’s recent return from a war in the Middle East. “So there are thrills and spills for the kids,” he says, “but adults are going to get a lot out of it too. All the people behind it have kids and wanted to make a Robin Hood for their children’s generation, just as they have revived Doctor Who.”
Armitage admits to doubts about becoming an actor. “I regret it a lot,” he says, furrowing his brow. “And I don’t know why, because when it’s good, it’s great. But it can take its toll on your emotions. You can spend a bit of yourself when you give yourself to a character. At the end of a job, you have to remind yourself who and what you are.” There is also the actor’s perennial fear that every job will be his last. Armitage once spent eight months out of work. He did a lot of DIY. In the future, he plans to learn film editing, so he would have directing to fall back on.
But there are still roles he would like to make his own. He is itching to return to the theatre. “Live acting is a kind of adventure sport,” he says. “I don’t go abseiling or snowboarding, but I sometimes think that stepping out on stage can have the same kind of adrenaline rush.” On his wish list are Pinter, “somewhere small and experimental”, Coriolanus and Richard III. He insists, however, that the parts still choose him. “Because I’m big, I can bring a certain physical power, status and authority to a character,” he says. “But I’m interested in exploring the contradiction of that and finding sensitivity and gentleness there. I’ve been this height since I was 14, so I know what it is to feel like a little boy when people are looking to you for strength.”
And where is the woman to build him up? “Given that I’m going to be abroad for the next six months, it’s no bad thing to be single this year,” he says ruefully. “It’s a peripatetic existence I’ve seen others struggle with.” What about Maid Marian, I venture encouragingly. “Yes, there is only one girl, and she’s very, very beautiful and getting a lot of attention. I’m quite far back at the end of the queue. Maybe I’ll find a nice Hungarian discus-thrower.”
The Impressionists starts on BBC1 today, 6.35pm
Costume dressed for success
Roger Moore
Ivanhoe, 1958
Moore’s breakthrough was perfect training for Bond, as a swashbuckling action hero in armour. All that was missing was the martinis and the sex.
Clint Eastwood
Rawhide, 1959
Eastwood was a bit-part actor until this TV western about drovers who cried “head ’em up, move ’em out”. In breaks, he made a Sergio Leone film.
Ryan O’Neal
Peyton Place, 1964
The first primetime US soap, set in small-town America in the 1940s, put O’Neal on the path to Love Story’s heartbroken matinee idol.
Michael York
Forsyte Saga, 1967
Cast alongside Kenneth More and Eric Porter, York’s break was as Jolyon (“Jolly”). Its success launched a career whose peaks include Cabaret.
Jeremy Irons
Brideshead Revisited, 1981
Many tipped teddy-cuddling cutie Anthony Andrews for stardom. It was Irons, however, playing Charles Ryder, who went on to win an Oscar.
Kenneth Branagh
Fortunes of War, 1987
An energetic and precocious talent, often cited as “the new Olivier”, Branagh made his on-screen mark with this mini series.
Sean Bean
Sharpe, 1993
The second choice after Paul McGann was injured, Bean looked so good in uniform that the series has just been revived. It was a springboard to a film career.
Colin Firth
Pride and Prejudice, 1995
Colin Firth emerging dripping from the lake as Mr Darcy has become one of the iconic moments in television history.
Ioan Gruffudd
Hornblower, 1998
Sailing into view in the £12m drama guaranteed attention from the film world.
Sally Kinnes
