Toronto Sun (09.12.2012)

Ein Artikel mit Interviewpassagen der PK/Promotion in Toronto. Da der Fokus auf RA liegt und die Zitate den Schwerpunkt bilden, habe ich mal einen eigenen Thread dafür eröffnet:

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/12/09/hobbit-star-richard-armitage-stands-tall

‘Hobbit’ star Richard Armitage stands tall

By Jim Slotek, QMI Agency

First posted: Sunday, December 09, 2012 02:15 PM EST | Updated: Sunday, December 09, 2012 02:24 PM EST
Hobbit premieres in New Zealand


NEW YORK - What does one say to a 6'2" dwarf?

"You're taller in person," we offer to Richard Armitage during his recent promotional visit to Toronto for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of Peter Jackson's new trilogy.

"I guess I'll be getting a lot of that," Armitage responds good-naturedly.

The British actor - whose most recent exposure on this side of the Pond was as a Nazi in Captain America - is one of several tall dwarves in the movie, taken from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, his introductory novel to Middle Earth.

Armitage plays Thorin Oakenshield, the angry, tormented leader of the survivors of a demolished dwarf city, laid siege by the dragon Smaug. They set out along with Gandalf the wizard (Ian McKellen, reprising his Lord Of The Rings role) and the title character, a Hobbit named Bilbo (Martin Freeman).

"The dwarves and Martin, we are all real-scale. We never had to indulge in any trickery with our height, except when we were with the elves and Gandalf.

"Because it's 3D, you can't use forced perspective, which they used on Lord Of The Rings," Armitage says. "So Peter developed this technology where one actor is on a regular scale set and the other is in a green room. And they overlay the image at the same time.

"But you rehearse together. So I found myself face-to-face with Ian for probably 90% of the shoot. I was grateful, because you don't want to do a movie with Ian McKellen and not meet him. And our characters' relationship is crucial to the story, it's fraught with anxiety and tension."

Height isn't the only area where Armitage differs from Thorin. The character in the novel is an elderly dwarf, nursing an age-old grudge.

"It's harder to invest in a character that you want to reclaim a city when he's in his eighties," says Hobbit screenwriter and co-producer Philippa Boyens. "So we were looking between 45 and 55, someone who had life left in them, who could be that heroic character and great fighter.

"Richard (at 40) was the youngest actor to audition for that role. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was gorgeous, but he did a phenomenal audition. He was quite grunty, Northern English, probably played a good game of rugby, which felt like the way Prof. Tolkien described the dwarves."

As a bonus, Armitage turned out to be a bit of a Tolkien nerd (his experience goes back to playing an elf at 13 in a production of The Hobbit in his native Birmingham - "They didn't have a lot of money, so Gollom was made out of paper, and the dragon was just a puff of smoke.")

We get talking about the wizards' White Council (the story of which expands what was once a thin children's book into trilogy length), and The Silmarillion, the collection of Middle Earth stories released posthumously by Tolkien's son. "I can really see that becoming a Game Of Thrones-type TV series. Each story is a beauty in itself.

"I'm still reading and still going back to Tolkien, his experiences in World War I, the loss of his friends, his Catholicism and how all that permeates his work."

Anscheinend ist der Artikel aus NY? Enthält jedenfalls die Passage, dass RA der jüngste war, der für Thorin vorgesprochen hat.

Ich glaube, inzwischen kann man von außen kaum noch unterscheiden, welche Passagen von welcher PK oder welcher kurzen Nachfrage eines einzelnen Journalisten im Dunstkreis der Promotionveranstaltungen stammt bzw. wer da von wem noch schnell etwas hinzunimmt, weil es gerade gut passt, klingt, etc. Im Text bezieht sich der Autor auf den Besuch in Toronto, der Ort des Beitrags ist NY, aber die Zeitung die 'Toronto Sun' - wer weiß?

Der Journalist war auf jeden Fall auch in NY, denn er hat auch einen Beitrag über die Franchise-Diskussion geschrieben, den ich hier abgelegt habe.

"It's harder to invest in a character that you want to reclaim a city when he's in his eighties," says Hobbit screenwriter and co-producer Philippa Boyens. "So we were looking between 45 and 55, someone who had life left in them, who could be that heroic character and great fighter.

"Richard (at 40) was the youngest actor to audition for that role. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was gorgeous, but he did a phenomenal audition. He was quite grunty, Northern English, probably played a good game of rugby, which felt like the way Prof. Tolkien described the dwarves."

As a bonus, Armitage turned out to be a bit of a Tolkien nerd.

"It's harder to invest in a character that you want to reclaim a city when he's in his eighties," says Hobbit screenwriter and co-producer Philippa Boyens. "So we were looking between 45 and 55, someone who had life left in them, who could be that heroic character and great fighter.

"Richard (at 40) was the youngest actor to audition for that role. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was gorgeous, but he did a phenomenal audition. He was quite grunty, Northern English, probably played a good game of rugby, which felt like the way Prof. Tolkien described the dwarves."

As a bonus, Armitage turned out to be a bit of a Tolkien nerd.

Mit starken Schmerzmitteln! Da kann er sich jetzt wirklich mal ausgiebig auf die Schulterklopfen. Passt nicht ganz zu den Vorstellungen der Macher, ist selbst angeschlagen und schlägt sich phänomenal!