Richard Armitage
Page Index:
Richard Armitage & King Richard III
Information about Richard Armitage as Actor
Fan Resources about Richard Armitage
♛ Richard Armitage & King Richard III ♛
7th April, 2013 – MagicFM, Rick Astley
Transcript on RichardArmitageCentral.co.uk and audio compilation on RichardArmitageNet.com of the full interview.
The Richard III-excerpt is quoted after the transcript by RichardArmitageCentral:
Rick: Now, I also gather that you’re doing a film about Richard III.
Um… I wish. No, I’m not doing a film about Richard III, but it’s something which is, it’s an interest, it’s a passion of mine and obviously they’ve recently discovered his burial place and they’ve done a facial reconstruction. Um … it’s an on-going project that may or may not come to fruition, but it doesn’t, you know, bend my, sway my interest in it.
Rick: He was found in your hometown, wasn’t he?
He was, and I’m actually named after him because I was born on the 22nd of August, which is the day that he died on Bosworth Field, so my father was interested in him, so I always grew up a little bit angry at my dad for naming me after a hunchback monster. But then he explained to me that he was just a, perhaps, a misinterpreted king so that’s something that’s become a passion of mine as well.
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10th / 13th March, 2013 – BBC Radio Leicester
Interview by Emily Anderson (prerecorded).
Transcript of the ‘full’ interview on 13th of March, 2013 on a separate page.
Transcript and audio-file of the interview version 10.03.2013 on BBC Radio Leicester (RichardArmitageNet.com)
Audio file for the interview version of 13.03.2013 (RichardAarmitageNet.com)
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6th March, 2013 – Richard Armitage on Twitter (@TheHobbitMovie)
RT @cat_v_: @thehobbitmovie if you could have dinner with any 3, fictional or non-fictional, who would they be? #AskThorin
— The Hobbit (@TheHobbitMovie) March 6, 2013
Richard: Richard III, John F. Kennedy, and Ian McKellen.
— The Hobbit (@TheHobbitMovie) March 6, 2013
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7th February, 2013 – BBC Radio Leicester
Philippa Langley mentions Richard Armitage in an interview with Ben Jackson:
He [Richard Armitage] is pitching it [the Richard III movie project] in LA as we speak.
People have said he [Richard Armitage] is too tall, but he has just played a dwarf.
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3rd February, 2013 – BBC Radio Leicester
Mr. Armitage had intended to join in on the BBC Radio Leicester Show shortly after 5 p.m. on Sunday 03.02.2013, but could not make it, as his flight was delayed.
So here the recording of his apology, sent to BBC Leicester via mail, kindly shared by Servetus:
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29th December, 2012 – Khaosod (Thailand daily newspaper)
Ali from RichardArmitageNet.com kindly alerted us to Richard Armitage mentioning “Richard III” as his intended ‘next project’ in the Thailand daily newspaper Khaosod. Here is the automatically translated passage (Google translator):
Khaosod-Thai daily newspaper (RIII remark translated 29.12.12)
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23rd December, 2012 – AsiaOne.com
Who’s Richard Armitage? – by Esther Ng, The New Paper
Plans of Richard Armitage about King Richard III:
What’s new?
Armitage hopes investors will come forward to fund the filming of Richard III, a project that he has been working to get off the ground for a few years.
Armitage intends to play the 15th century English king who was believed to have murdered his nephews in a bid to grab the throne. Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle on English soil.
Incidentally, Armitage was named Richard as he was born on the anniversary of Richard III’s death on Aug 22.
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15th December, 2012 – Richard Armitage in Leicester Mercury
“I managed to get home [...] when we finished filming in New Zealand,” he [Richard Armitage] says. “It was just as they were finding the Richard III bones in that car park. I’m excited to hear about the findings of this DNA, I’ve watched with interest.
“Richard III, now that’s a play,” he says. “I was named after him. My father’s a historical fanatic about his character and I’ve inherited that enthusiasm, but I know by the time I get the chance I’ll be too old and too tall to play the role. I’d somehow like to realise that part of history.”
(Full article at RichardArmitageNet.com.
Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 (with quote))
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12th December, 2012 – George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight
Video-Interview – Richard Armitage mentioning King Richard III again as inspiration for his role as Thorin Oakenshield. Especially the self awareness of having a potential of being corrupted, seems to have found its way from Shakespeare’s depiction into the interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s king of the dwarves Thorin Oakenshield. (Topic starting at about [6:30] and Richard III is mentioned at about [7:00] in the video interview.)
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12th December, 2012 – TheOneRing.net
Richard Armitage talks to TheOneRing.net – mentioning King Richard III in the Shakespeare version as method to prepare for his role Thorin Oakenshield in “The Hobbit”. What characteristics did he take from the king?
[...]I ended up using Henry V, Richard III and Macbeth as soliloquies that I could use to get some vocal production going. [...] the self hating deformity of Richard III was sort of relevant [...].
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28th November, 2012 – Premiere-event for “The Hobbit” by Sir Peter Jackson in Wellington, New Zealand on TVNZ
On the red carpet, Mr. Armitage was interviewed by many reporters, but the key question for us came from a fan in the crowd, who was following the red carpet event in Wellington.
Unfortunately, in the material broadcasted by TVNZ in the One News Hobbit Special, which was presented by Wendy Petrie, I can’t make out the question of the fan, though from the voice it is a woman. The reporter next to her unfortunately does not lend his microphone to her, but Mr. Armitage’s answer is recorded very well:
I would love to play King Richard. I may be a little bit too old and a little bit too tall, – but I played a dwarf.
TVNZ One News does not enable an embed code, so here comes the link to the full Hobbit Special, which takes about an hour (and has embedded advertisements).
The interview with Richard Armitage starts at about 23:30 and the quote is at 24:20.
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22nd July, 2011 – The Telegraph.co.uk interview by Jasper Rees:
One day he’d like to have a go at ultimate baddie Richard III.
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8th July, 2009 – Interview with Richard Armitage on VulpesLibris by Moira:
VL: Now, you were born on August the 22nd and your given name is Richard. I believe those two facts are not completely disconnected – and that there are plans afoot for a bit of Richard III rehabilitation. Can you tell us a little more about it?
I was named Richard being born on the anniversary of Richard III’s demise at Bosworth; one of my father’s favourite novels is The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman, and I read this many years ago. In recent years it has lead to a tentative interest and line of research into the rehabilitation of this story. As an actor, it’s a project I would love to achieve. I believe it is a great story, a socio-political thriller, a love story and a dynastic tragedy. My challenge is to convince commercial producers to see beyond ‘history lesson’, but I strongly suspect that this will be a long way off, probably outside of my ability to play the role, but I wouldn’t rule out playing another role, I may even be producing by the time someone wakes up and realizes the potential for this project.
VL: Casting a quick eye down your CV, I have to say there’s a bit of a lack of jolly, cheery characters. [...] so, are you drawn to darker characters because they’re more interesting to play [...]?
[...] I always look for good within bad and vice versa. That’s what appeals to me about Richard III. The villain, the hunchback, child murdering, usurping monster – I want to try and find the man who loved Anne Neville, passionately, from childhood until death, who was inconsolable at the loss of his only son and who put in place the ‘even handed’ judicial system, which we enjoy today; and then have him ‘slaughter’ the Princes in the Tower. It’s all about contradictions.
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26th October, 2008 – “Sunday People” (Full article on RichardArmitageOnline.com)
Who would you invite to a fantasy dinner party?
Richard III, definitely. I’m studying him at the moment and there are so many questions I’d like to ask him.
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18th October, 2008 – “The Times”, p 33 f. (Full article on RichardArmitageOnline.com)
He [Richard Armitage] is currently working on a long gestating biopic of Richard III that will, apparently, redress the imablanced portrait created by Shakespeare and also involve an “ugly” makeover.
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3rd December, 2007 – Christmas Message by Richard Armitage to his fans on RichardArmitageOnline.com:
[...] Richard III is still very much in development, I am weighed down with history books in my determination to uncover as much fact as possible before we embark on telling his story, which will ultimately be a fiction!
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3rd October, 2007 – GMTV interview with Lorraine Kelly:
I am taking some baby steps at the moment towards producing the story of Richard III. I am trying to resurrect his character [...]. It’s only been portrayed in literature, really. It’s never actually been filmed, the true story, and we are used to Shakespeare’s story. So at the moment that’s where my attention is. So hopefully that will come off the ground. [...] He was one of our best kings.
♛ Information about Richard Armitage as Actor ♛
- IMDB – profile
- Wikipedia page
- Profile and portfolio on the website of his agents
♛ Fan Resources about Richard Armitage ♛
- RichardArmitageOnline.com
(Maintained with great dedication by Annette, recipient of the RA-Messages)
- RichardArmitageNet.com
(Updates with Richard Armitage news all around the world, wonderfully collected and presented by Ali)
- Collection of Richard III quotes by Richard Armitage
in a blog post by Darlingdarling (21st June, 2011)
- Collection of audio- and video excerpts of Richard Armitage mentioning King Richard III,
collected by Fabolaktuko (White Rose Blog)
22nd - 28th of August, 2011
FanstRAvaganza 2012
March 12th - 18th, 2012