Man of many parts Richard Armitage was in Newcastle to talk about his moving new film

The actor famous for roles in Spooks, The Hobbit and Captain America: The First Avenger also plays Chop, an ex-social worker

By David Whetstone

6 APR 2018


He’s been a dwarf king, a Marvel Comics assassin and much else besides. But Richard Armitage was in Newcastle last weekend to discuss a very different role. DAVID WHETSTONE had a chat

The problem for good actors is that, try as they might, they carry around with them a bit of every character they’ve ever played.

They might claim to shed the skin of their latest role after curtain call (theatre) or wrap (screen), but there’s a small part of every punter for whom they will always be the superhero, the drunk, the serial killer or the femme fatale.

So for me it’s Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thráin, grandson of Thrór and King under the Mountain, who walks out of the rain and into Colonel Porter’s Emporium at the bottom of Dean Street, Newcastle.

Richard Armitage is a lot taller, obviously. Thorin is a dwarf, albeit a regal one, in The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien’s book which was spread across three screen epics by film director Peter Jackson.

The actor, who is 46, gained facial hair and (somehow) lost inches to play Thorin, winning the enduring affection of fans including my son with whom I’ve watched The Hobbit films several times on screens both big and small.

But even setting aside the similarities between the pub The Prancing Pony in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Colonel Porter’s Emporium with its taxidermied animal heads and eccentric clientele (wholly owing on this occasion to its being the media centre for the first Newcastle International Film Festival), it’s Thorin’s handsome profile and commanding air I see.

Others will see different things, including Victorian mill owner John Thornton in the BBC series North & South, back in 2004, and Marvel Comics assassin Heinz Kruger in Captain America: The First Avenger.

“I thought you were very good in Spooks,” offers dynamic film festival chairman Jacqui Miller-Charlton.

But none of these past credits brings Richard Armitage to rain-drenched Newcastle.

Showing at the festival is a film called Urban and the Shed Crew which has no characters from the fantasy worlds of Tolkien or Marvel.

It tells a story that is all too horribly real and close to home.

It is based on a book by Bernard Hare who grew up on a tough estate in Leeds, moved to London to work as a social worker and then, in the 1990s, returned home to find that conditions on the estate had taken a turn for the worse.

Abandoned and illiterate kids were living wild, doing what they pleased. Hare, coming from a similar background, befriended some of them and wrote a book about them, Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew, which was published in 2005.

Urban Grimshaw (real name: Lee Kirton) was a 12-year-old glue sniffer and the leader of the crew of homeless kids who did indeed sleep in a shed. He and Hare struck up a relationship which led to the writer eventually adopting the boy.

The book was critically acclaimed and nominated for a major prize.

An early reader was journalist-turned-filmmaker Candida Brady who went on to direct the film of the book and is with Richard Armstrong at Colonel Porter’s Emporium.

“I read the book when it came out,” she says. “It hits you between the eyes.

“One of the things it got me thinking about was babies born in prison. I’d never read about that or thought about it.

“Everything from that point on was wrong in that child’s life and it has a knock-on effect on society. That thought wouldn’t leave me.

“I tried to option the book but someone beat me to it initially and I forgot all about it.”

Then, after Candida finished her film documentary Trashed (in which Jeremy Irons explores the problem of pollution and global waste) in 2012, she was reminded about Bernard Hare’s book and got in touch.

This time she managed to acquire the screen rights to the book and she shares writing credits with Bernard Hare. Tellingly, the first line in the film is: “I was born in prison.”

Richard Armitage was equally struck by the story.

“I read Bernie’s book first and then I read Candida’s script. The book is non-fiction but it reads like a novel and it’s very powerful.

“My family was born and bred in Leeds and they know all the streets around there.

“My cousin’s partner is a policeman in the area and he saw the film and recognised what it was saying – and I feel very connected to it.”

In the film Richard plays Chop, the character based on Bernard Hare.

The synopsis on the IMDb website states: “A hard-living, disillusioned, ex-social worker becomes the unlikely saviour to an anarchic gang of joyriding, drug-taking, thieving, out-of-control, care home runaway kids.”

“I love flawed characters,” says the actor, adding: “That’s all of us really.”

But what he loves about Bernard Hare, he says, is the way he played down his own achievements in his book.

“I felt it was up to me to bring that side of him out. He is a very good storyteller and he was helping these children to emerge from their own dire circumstances by becoming storytellers.

“I find that inspirational, especially given the fact that he’s a pretty damaged person who has also had his ups and downs.

“We all seem to be obsessed with superheroes but it’s someone like him, downplaying himself in his book, who I think is a superhero.

“He didn’t do what he did for the awards or the applause. What he’s done is its own reward really.”

Something similar could be said of Richard Armitage, an actor prepared to set aside time for work that’s perhaps better for the soul than the bank balance.

Explaining how a successful actor’s life pans out, he says: “You get sent a script and sometimes your agent will say, ‘It’s not going to make you much money’.

“You’d be surprised how often that means the script is really good and I’ll want to do the film.”

In Candida Brady’s film he stars – if that’s the word for a film like this – opposite Anna Friel who plays Greta, Urban’s mum.

She was, says Candida, “a beautiful young woman with this little baby. If you didn’t know, she could have been a duchess”.

The idea of women in prison, and particularly expectant mothers in prison, clearly motivated the director who strove for years to get access to a prison mother and baby unit.

“The thing that struck me is that 50% of women in prison are there because of crimes they committed for their partner. Then their family is taken away and it leads to major disruption. There seems to be a lack of common sense.”

She tells of six children from the same family being sent to different care homes.

“Urban, from the age of six, was running away from care where they used to keep them quiet with sedatives and keep them in their pyjamas.”

In researching for the film she was taken by the real-life Urban (played by Fraser Kelly who is also in Newcastle for the film festival) to the place he used to sleep as a child.

“I was horrified beyond words. There’s a ledge under the railway in Leeds with rushing water at one side.

“Six kids would sleep on this ledge to keep away from the paedophiles.”

Both Richard and Candida agree that Greta, desperately trying to keep her family together, is one of the heroes of the story.

If the film sounds remorselessly grim, Richard ensures me it isn’t. Bernard Hare won the kids over by teaching them speed chess and this was something Richard had to learn on set.

“These kids had been written off and excluded from school. Urban had dyslexia. But they learn to play speed chess and became incredibly good at it.

“And Bernie is funny. There have been terrible parts of his life but he’s managed to maintain this very dry sense of humour.”

In making the film Richard has given his support to the charity Action for Children which helps disadvantaged youngsters across the country.

“I hope this release helps to highlight the work Action for Children do to help children and young people who are disadvantaged,” he says.

“Hope is the one thing that can guide a person out of difficulty and the work that Bernie and Action for Children do provides hope.”
Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield
Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield (Image: Publicity Picture)

John Egan, the charity’s director, says it is active across the North, overseeing mother and baby units in prisons, children’s centres and programmes to support young people.

“With the child’s needs at the core, we identify what other family members need so that we keep families together where possible.

“The good news is that because of our frontline work, we also see the truth in the film’s central message of hope: ‘It only takes one person to care’.”

Richard, a little jet-lagged because he has just flown in from Canada, has a couple of new films on the go, one called The Lodge and another, also starring Julie Delphy, called My Zoe.

Also on the way to our screens is Ocean’s 8, a spin off from Ocean’s 11 and its sequels featuring a female crime gang (stars include Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anna Hathaway). Richard plays Claude Becker, an art curator.

Richard says he was last in Newcastle in 1997 in a production of 42nd Street at the Theatre Royal.

“It was my first job out of drama school. I can still remember looking out of a second floor dressing room and seeing these under-dressed revellers on the street – and I remember the smell of hops from the brewery. Every time I smell that now I think of Newcastle.”

The brewery, sadly, has gone. But there are more cinemas now to show Urban and the Shed Crew when it is finally released after what Richard and Candida refer to as “little complications”.

It went down well at its Newcastle International Film Festival screening, getting the People’s Vote award and winning for Richard Armitage, man of many parts, the award for best acting.

One sad footnote to the story: Lee Kirton died last year of a drug overdose.