Welcome to RichardArmitageOnline.com

This is an unofficial website about the work of the British actor Richard Armitage, star of BBC Spooks, Robin Hood, North and South and The Vicar of Dibley.

There's information here about his television, film and theatre work, including pictures and video clips of many of his TV and film roles. You can also read his comments about his characters, taken from published interviews.

Navigate to any of his roles from the menu at the top of the page, or go to the Television Career, Film Career, Theatre Career or Voice Career pages and follow the links from there. Also see...

Latest News

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The BAFTA awards  Richard Armitage will be one of those presenting an award at the BAFTA television awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday 26th April. He also presented an award at the 2007 ceremony.

The seventh series of Spooks has been nominated for a BAFTA in the Best Drama Series category. The other series nominated are Doctor Who, Wallander and Shameless. The first series of Spooks won the BAFTA in this category in the 2002 awards, and it was also nominated in 2004 and 2005.

'The BAFTAs' are the most prestigious awards in British television, and are given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. The full list of nominees can be seen at BAFTA's website.

The series has also been nominated for two BAFTA craft awards. Paul Leonard-Morgan has been nominated in the Orginal Television Music category, while the Spooks sound team is nominated for the Sound (fiction/entertainment) award. Spooks won two craft awards last year, having been nominated several times in various craft categories over the previous years. The craft awards will be presented on Sunday 17th May at the London Hilton Hotel.

Moving On  Richard Armitage's next project is a drama for BBC One Daytime to be broadcast in May, probably on 20th May. The BBC's press pack about the series is now available, and it includes an interview with Richard Armitage.

Moving On is a series of five dramas about characters who are moving on in their lives. Richard plays John Mulligan in the third of the dramas, Drowning not Waving, by new writer Sarah Deane.

He decribes John Mulligan as "an enigma", someone from a sink estate who has risen to become a successful property developer, wearing designer clothes and driving a flash car. John offers to help an old friend, Ellie Morgan (played by Christine Tremarco), but is he too good to be true?

Although the series is executive-produced by award-winning writer Jimmy McGovern, its purpose is to showcase up-and-coming writers and directors, many of whom are new to TV. The scripts attracted a formidable cast, which includes Sheila Hancock, Richard Armitage, Ian Hart, Dervla Kirwan and Lesley Sharp". Themes explored include "the property slump, gun violence and, in an episode starring Ian Hart and Dervla Kirwan, transvestism."

Read more about Moving On, and Richard Armitage's thoughts on his character and what attracted him to this role .

TV magazines on Robin Hood  The British TV magazines continue to comment on Robin Hood. Richard Armitage is absent from episodes 3 and 4, Guy of Gisborne having been dragged off to what he thinks is certain death at the hands of Prince John. In reality, Richard Armitage was still filming the end of the seventh series of Spooks last summer when Robin Hood's filming began. The Radio Times (18th-24th April), commenting on episode 4, ends, "But somehow, without bad old Gisborne around, it all lacks a certain something."  Sir Guy returns to Nottingham in episode 5, to be broadcast on 25th April.

The week the new series began, the Radio Times had an article about the filming of the series in Hungary, and Richard Armitage was interviewed briefly in the features in TV Quick and TV Choice. Several magazines also published articles about it, including TV Times, TV & Satellite Week and What's on TV.

A letter published in this week's What's on TV thanking them for publishing a picture of Gisborne in the earlier edition gives them the opportunity to print another photo of him!

Robin Hood audiobooks - clips Big Finish are releasing six new audiobooks tied to the third series of Robin Hood. Two of them are read by Richard Armitage - The Witchfinders, written by Rebecca Levene, and The Siege, written by Simon Guerrier.

The April podcast on their website includes two brief clips from The Witchfinders (from approximately 3 min 15 sec).

The Witchfinders is released on 30th April and The Siege is released on 30th June. Both books can be pre-ordered from Big Finish for £8.99 each (see the links above to each book). The Witchfinders can also be pre-ordered from Amazon UK. See the Robin Hood series 3 Audiobooks page for more details.

Sylvester excerpt Naxos Audiobooks has made available an audio-clip from Richard Armitage's new reading of Georgette Heyer's novel, 'Sylvester'. This 10 minute excerpt is from the opening of the book. Listen...

The audiobook is due for release on 1st July.  Written in 1957, 'Sylvester' is one of the most popular of Heyer's Regency romances. Witty and romantic, its heroine is Phoebe Marlow, who flees her home to avoid marrying Sylvester, the wealthy Duke of Salford. But the pair are fated to meet again...

The audiobook can be pre-ordered at Amazon UK, Amazon Germany and Amazon Canada. It's listed at Amazon USA, though it's not yet available for ordering there. It'll also be available as an MP3 download from the Naxos website.

Spooks on iTunes  Series 7 of Spooks is available for download at iTunes in the UK. Each episode costs £1.89.

Robin Hood series 3 DVD  The Region 2 DVD boxset of the third series of Robin Hood will be released on 22nd June. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon UK.

Interview with Richard Armitage on Digital Spy  'Tube Talk' on the Digital Spy website ran video interviews with Robin Hood cast members each day during the week before Robin Hood's new series started, and Saturday's interview was with Richard Armitage. It was filmed on the set of Robin Hood in Hungary last summer. He discusses Gisborne's character in the new series, and also talks about Spooks, which he'd just finished filming.

BBC News article  A feature on the BBC News website about the new series of Robin Hood includes comments from several cast members, including Richard Armitage. "I seem to engage in a lot more sword fights and they're very skilful sword fights, often involving more than one person, so that's been very exciting to play this year," he said.

The cast were speaking last summer during the filming of the show in Hungary. It's the last series for Jonas Armstrong, who plays Robin Hood. When asked about the ending of the series, Richard said that he'd just read the script for the last episode. "It's like being hit round the head with a plank," he said. "It's incredibly moving what happens at the end of this. It's a fantastic series finale. I think he's going to be greatly missed, but what the series will lose by his departure, they gain with his incredible storyline. I was really choked."

Halifax Evening Courier  Regional newspaper The Halifax EveningCourier has an article about a local schoolboy, James Buckley, who appears in the fifth episode of the new series of Robin Hood. He plays an orphan who travels to Nottingham and joins Robin's Outlaws. The article includes photos of him with cast members on the set during his two weeks in Budapest last summer - including one with Richard Armitage.

Richard Armitage on GMTV  Richard was interviewed about Robin Hood on 25th March on GMTV, by Kate Garraway and Andrew Castle. He described Guy of Gisborne in the new series as being "all out rotten, from the inside out", and said that the revenge storyline between Robin and Guy over Marian's death plays out throughout the new series. He also revealed that filming had just started on the new series of Spooks. Watch the interview...

BBC Press Office interview  Richard Armitage talks about Guy of Gisborne in the new series of Robin Hood in an interview published at the BBC Press Office.

"This year we chose to make Gisborne look wasted, bedraggled, yet at times heroic – it's brilliant to play a character that can both attract and repel," he said. "He is darker and more disturbed this series. I suspect the viewers will not like him, but they may understand why they hate him!"

Spooks series 7 DVD   A Region 4 DVD boxset of Spooks is being released in Australia on 30th March. It can be ordered at the ABC Shop, EzyDVD and JB Hifi.

The Region 2 DVD boxset of series 7 of Spooks was due to be released in February but it has now been delayed until 12th October. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon UK.

See the New and Recent DVDs page for details of other DVDs scheduled for release soon, or recently released, including Region 2 boxsets of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and George Gently.

New TV narration work   Richard Armitage narrated a documentary about human conception called The Great Sperm Race on Channel 4 in March. See The Great Sperm Race page for excerpts from it.

 Also in March, he provided the narration for a three part series of New Homes from Hell 2009, broadcast on ITV1. The series recounted the disasters that people have had with properties. See the New Homes From Hell 2009 page for some excerpts from the series.

Richard Armitage at BBC Showcase  BBC Worldwide's annual Showcase event took place in Brighton in February. Richard Armitage was one of the actors who attended, helping to sell BBC programmes to overseas broadcasters. (Spooks and Robin Hood are among the five most successful TV series sold by the BBC around the world.)

He was featured very briefly in a report from the event on BBC Breakfast on 25th February (with thanks to Yorkshirewench for the video clip). Also seen in this clip are Robert Glenister (see below), and Julie Graham, with whom Richard appeared in Between the Sheets in 2003.

And he and Robert Glenister (who appears in several episodes of Spooks as the Home Secretary) were interviewed by The Stage for its weekly podcast as part of its coverage of BBC Showcase. They discussed Spooks, and Richard also spoke about the new series of Robin Hood. Listen to the podcast at The Stage's website (the interview begins at approximately 13' 30"), or read a transcription of some of Richard's comments.

Richard Armitage tops poll of romantic novelists Richard has been voted into first place in  The Romantic Novelists Association's annual Valentine's poll. Each year, romantic novelists are invited to vote for the man they consider to be the sexiest. In 2008 Richard was fourth in the poll, but this year he beat the likes of Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Daniel Craig to come top, polling 20% of all the votes, more than twice as many as any other man. Further information...

The story was picked up in a number of national newspapers, including the Daily Mail, Guardian and Daily Express.

Spooks series 8  The BBC has announced that it has commissioned Kudos Film and Television to produce an eighth series of Spooks. Filming will begin in March 2009. Its press release describes the current series as "its most critically-acclaimed ever".

Richard Armitage is quoted as saying, "I'm thrilled with the response we've had to this series and I can't wait to find out what the next series has in store. If the climactic episodes at the end of series seven are anything to go by, I think series eight will be spectacular. I am excited about taking Lucas into deeper and more dangerous territory, and seeing if he can survive!"

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Forthcoming work

Tied to the new series of Robin Hood will be six new Robin Hood audiobooks, two of which are read by Richard Armitage. The first will be released in April.

In May he will appear in one of a series of five short dramas called Moving On, to be broadcast on BBC One Daytime.

In July, an audiobook of Georgette Heyer's Sylvester, read by Richard, will be released.

He is now filming the eighth series of Spooks, returning as MI5 officer Lucas North. It will be broadcast on the BBC in the autumn.

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