'Into the Storm' whisks actor Richard Armitage away from Middle-earth
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'Into the Storm' whisks actor Richard Armitage away from Middle-earth
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By Cindy Pearlman
NEW YORK TIMES SYNDICATE • Tuesday August 5, 2014 6:31 AM
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WARNER BROS.
Richard Armitage, who is best-known as dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit trilogy
Richard Armitage struggles to detach himself from The Hobbit.

“It’s challenging to convince the industry that I’m not Thorin,” said the British actor, best-known as the combative dwarf king in the Hobbit movies.

“I walk into a room, and people say, ‘Oh, you’re tall — and so much less hairy than we expected!’  ”

The 43-year-old actor spoke from London, where he had returned after filming The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the final installment in the Peter Jackson trilogy.

The project at hand, though, is Into the Storm, a disaster movie set to open on Friday in theaters nationwide.

“I play a schoolteacher from the Midwest,” said Armitage, whose scenes were mostly filmed in Detroit. “My character has lost his wife, and he’s busy being the father of two boys.”

The film, he said, opens when the boys are making a time-capsule video.

Mother Nature decides to enliven their video.

“A giant tornado hits town, and one of my sons goes missing,” Armitage said. “I have to go in search of the boy among all this weather, tornadoes and wreckage. It turns into a terrifying chase."

The actor, who shot the movie more than a year ago, recently saw the film and was pleasantly surprised, he said.

“This film grew into something even more substantial than I expected. The effects are spectacular. Plus, there is a human element to this story that’s really well-crafted.”

To prepare for the role, he turned to television and video coverage of real-life disasters.

“I watched footage of ordinary people in the aftermath of an earthquake,” he recalled. “I saw these amazing people racing back into an office building that had fallen to pull out their mates. These weren’t action heroes, either, but, by the end of the day, they were heroes.”

The greatest challenge of a disaster movie is convincingly depicting the disaster.

“The tornadoes were all (computer-generated) special effects,” Armitage said, “but we really did have 100-mph wind machines on the set. There was a real 18-wheeler tossed off a crane. The production did rip a roof off a school.

“Half of the film consisted of the actors doing practical stunts,” he said, “so it really did feel like we were in the middle of everything.”

The approach was fine with the classically trained actor.

“I love doing stunts,” he said. “I think you can always see when they put the stunt guy in. Plus, I like to know that I’ve been through what the character has been through and that I’ve done everything that he has had to do in the movie. I want to survive what my character survives.”

Armitage was born and raised in Leicester, England.

“My childhood was spent reading classic novels, when I wasn’t pretending to have a sword fight."

He has forged a career with roles in films such as Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013).

He will reprise his role as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, due out on Dec. 17. Playing the dwarf king has been a treat for Armitage, a lifelong fan of author J.R.R. Tolkien.

And Jackson, Armitage said, has saved the best for last.

“I’ve seen rough edits, and all I can say is that the film is fast and the action doesn’t let up.”