Richard Armitage

Born

in Leichester, The United Kingdom

August 22, 1971

Website

http://www.richardarmitageonline.com/index.html

Twitter

https://twitter.com/RCArmitage

Genre

Historical Fiction

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British actor and audio-book narrator.

Richard Armitage was born in 1971, the second son of Margaret, a secretary, and John, an engineer. He grew up in a village outside the city. Some of his favourite childhood stories included The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

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 British actor and audio-book narrator.

Richard Armitage was born in 1971, the second son of Margaret, a secretary, and John, an engineer. He grew up in a village outside the city. Some of his favourite childhood stories included The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

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 ...more

Combine Editions
Richard Armitage’s books

Average rating: 3.98 · 11,221 ratings · 2,021 reviews · 51 distinct works • Similar authors

	Classic Love Poems by Richard Armitage (Narrator), Elizabeth Barrett Browning , William Shakespeare 3.83 avg rating — 1,984 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Richard Armitage & Joy Ellis: Audible Sessions by Richard Armitage, Joy Ellis (Goodreads Author) , Robin Morgan-Bentley 4.67 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2018	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Richard Armitage: Audible Sessions by Richard Armitage, Elise Italiaander really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Natural Allies: A Blueprint for the Future of U.S.-India Relations by Richard Armitage, R. Nicholas Burns , Richard Fontaine 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by A.J. Hartley (Goodreads Author), David Hewson (Goodreads Author) , Richard Armitage (Narrator) 4.12 avg rating — 2,469 ratings — published 2014 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Romeo And Juliet by David Hewson (Goodreads Author), Richard Armitage (Narrator) 3.88 avg rating — 589 ratings — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Chimes by Charles Dickens, Richard Armitage (Narrator) 3.16 avg rating — 5,832 ratings — published 1844 — 360 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, Richard Armitage (Narrator) 4.10 avg rating — 12,535 ratings — published 1957 — 49 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris (Goodreads Author), Richard Armitage (Narrator) 4.27 avg rating — 217,561 ratings — published 2018 — 96 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Venetia by Georgette Heyer, Richard Armitage (Reading) 4.09 avg rating — 12,776 ratings — published 1958 — 65 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Richard Armitage

“I have a secret feeling that we're all Hobbits. Deep down we all want to stay home and feel safe, but we all dream about someone knocking on the door and saying "Come on an adventure and let's have a fun ride.”
― Richard Armitage, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Chronicles I: Art & Design

tags: the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey

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