Alun Armstrong

At 78 years old, Alun Armstrong has this physical status:

Alan Armstrong (born 17 July 1946), also known as Alun Armstrong, is an English actor.

Armstrong grew up in County Durham, North East England.

He first became interested in performing in Shakespeare productions at his grammar school.

He has performed "the complete range of characters from the grotesque to musicals" since his career began in the 1970s, according to his words. "I always play vivacious characters, many of whom are a bit dissatisfied, despotic, psychotic." In New Tricks, I am the eccentric ex-detective Brian Lane.

Armstrong, a trained actor who spent nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, is also an excellent stage performer.

He starred in Les Misérables in London, and he received an Olivier Award for his role in Sweeney Todd.

Early life

Born Alan Armstrong of Annfield, County Durham, Durham, United States, his father was a coal miner, and both his parents, Methodist lay preachers. He attended Annfield Plain Junior School, then Consett Grammar School, where a teacher encouraged him to try acting. In the lower sixth, he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew, a role in which he later performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Armstrong attended the National Youth Theatre summer school in 1964, but his ethnicity and northern accent made him feel out of place. He applied for RADA but was refused. He later studied fine art at Newcastle University. He found the course pretentious and felt he did not fit in, and he was suspended after two years after starting classes.

Before deciding to try acting again, Armstrong served as a bricklayer and as a gravedigger. He started as an assistant stage manager at the Cambridge Arts Theatre and then moved to a Theatre in Education firm affiliated with the Sheffield Repertory Theatre. He has appeared in several Radio 4 dramas.

Personal life

Armstrong and his partner, Sue, have three children: Tom, Joe (also an actor), and Dan. In the 2012 BBC adaptation of Henry IV, the father and son performed older and younger versions of the same character. Dan was a member of the Clock Opera. Armstrong appeared in the music video for their album "The Lost Buoys."

Armstrong received two honorary degrees in July 2009 in recognition of his contributions to the arts. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia and an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Sunderland. After Armstrong's hometown, Stanley, County Durham, was named after him in 2014.

Armstrong is a fan of AFC Wimbledon, as well as his character in New Tricks.

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Career

Armstrong made his screen debut in Get Carter (1971). Armstrong, who learned that the film was being shot in Newcastle, wrote a letter to MGM, the film's producer, and was invited to talk with director Mike Hodges, who wanted to cast local actors.

Armstrong has appeared in a number of films, but mostly in supporting roles. He played a small part in A Bridge Too Far (1977), as one of the British troops at the Battle of Arnhem. In Ridley Scott's 1977 film "The Duellists," he played Lieutenant Lecourbe, a French soldier. In the 1983 fantasy film Krull, he played a supporting role as the bandit leader Torquil.

Maxwell Randall, Alan Clarke's snooker musical Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1987), was his first cinematic lead role. Armstrong sang "I Bite Back."

Armstrong was an SO-13 officer in the Patriot Games (1992). In Braveheart (1995), he played the Scottish noble Mornay who betrayed William Wallace. In Millions (2004), he played Saint Peter with a Geordie accent, and he was Egypt's villainous Egyptian cult leader Baltus Hafez. He appeared in Sleepy Hollow (1999) and Magistrate Fang in Rome Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005) and Uncle Garrow in Eragon (2006).

Armstrong has appeared in over 80 television shows. He appeared in numerous TV shows during the 1970s, including episodes of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Porridge, Public Eye, and The Sweeney.

In North East England, he appeared in two mini-series dealing with coal miners. Joe Gowlan appeared in The Stars Look Down (1974) based on A. J. Cronin's book and appeared in Ken Loach's Days of Hope (1975) in Durham, England. Armstrong ranked Days of Hope as a favorite in a 2007 interview: "I loved it because it was my own history and roots that were being chronicled, and, in a way, nothing gets better than that."

He appeared in the comedy series A Sharp Intake of Breath as a complex character that intrigues the life of the main character played by David Jason. In 1977, he was the strict Deputy Headmaster in Willy Russell's Our Day Out, a television play about a group of poor schoolchildren on a daytrip. He appeared in the 1981 Yorkshire television drama Get Lost!

Armstrong has portrayed characters from Charles Dickens' books. In the eight-hour Royal Shakespeare Company stage adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby's Life and Adventures, he played Wackford Squeers and Mr. Wagstaff. He has appeared in two versions of Oliver Twist: Agnes Fleming's father Captain Fleming's father on television and then as Magistrate Fang in the 2005 Roman Polanski film. He appeared in four BBC Dickens adaptations, including Daniel Peggotty in David Copperfield (1999); as Inspector Bucket in Little Dorrit (2008); and as Hiram Grewgious in The Mysterious Incident (2012). Since reading David Copperfield aloud in school, Armstrong has been a fan of Dickens. He remembered Dan Peggotty's houseboat on the beach, but he turned down an invitation from Clint Eastwood, with whom he had worked on White Hunter Black Heart.

He appeared in The BBC drama series Our Families in the North (1996), portraying Austin Donohue, a character based on the politician T. Dan Smith. In the BBC series Aristocrats (1999), Armstrong portrayed 18th century politician Henry Fox. George Oldfield, the Assistant Chief Constable for West Yorkshire Police whose wellbeing deteriorated during the probe, appeared in the 2000 TV film This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. The killer's condition continued during the probe, according to him. For his role in This Is Personal, he was nominated for a Royal Television Society award.

He played a widower worried about his son's suspicious behavior in Bedtime's second season. He and Brenda Blethyn co-starred in Between the Sheets (2003) as a lying married couple in sex therapy. In a Carrie's War II adaptation, he played a stoutgent man who reluctantly took in two children.

Armstrong is best known for his role as Brian Lane in the BBC One series New Tricks, a group of retired police detectives who support investigators looking into unsolved and open cases for London's Metropolitan Police. Brian Lane's character is one of an alcoholic who has a knack for recalling particulars of old cases and colleagues. Armstrong revealed in August 2012 that he would leave the show after the tenth series. Following remarks made by the cast in an interview with the Radio Times that criticized some of the series's scripts, the show's writer-director Julian Simpson rebuttal.

Armstrong continued to work on other projects during the run of New Tricks. He appeared in the 2004 film When I'm 64 about a lonely retired schoolteacher who starts a friendship with another man. Despite his reservations about filming a love scene with co-star Paul Freeman, he chose the role because it was a lovely and thought-provoking tale. He appeared in The Girls Who Came to Stay (2006), which follows a British couple who are exposed to the Chernobyl tragedy and Filth (2008) as the husband of "Clean-Up TV" activist Mary Whitehouse.

He appeared in three series from 2009 to 2011, including William Garrow's mentor John Southouse in the BBC period's legal drama Garrow's Law. In 2012, he appeared as Earl of Northumberland in Henry IV, Parts I and II. Joe Armstrong, his son, was the son of Northumberland's Hotspur. Penny Dreadful, an actor who gives Frankenstein's monster a job at the Grand Guignol, played Vincent Brand, an actor who gives Frankenstein's monster a job. Clifford Bentley appeared in the 2014 Christmas special at Downton Abbey and played Clifford Bentley in the ITV cop drama Prime Suspect 1973.

Armstrong has appeared in several theatre productions in addition to his film and television appearances. Billy Spencer was one of his early appearances in David Storey's play The Changing Room at the Royal Court Theatre directed by Lindsay Anderson in 1971. In 1975, he appeared in As You Like It, directed by Peter Gill at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Armstrong spent nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1979 to 1988. In Much Ado About Nothing and Azdak in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, he appeared on tour and at the Donmar Warehouse in 1979-80.

Armstrong appeared in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby as Wackford Squeers in 1981. The company was on tour to appear on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre. In 1982, the Old Vic Theatre was filmed on television.

Armstrong appeared in The Taming of the Shrew, the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, and the Barbican Theatre in 1982–83. Sinéad Cusack played Trinculo in The Tempest and Petruchio. In 1983, he appeared Ralph Trapdoor in Helen Mirren's The Roaring Girl. Leontes in The Winter's Tale and John Proctor in The Crucible was performed in Leontes by John Proctor and Christ Church, Spitalfields in 1984 and 1985, when he appeared in The Crucible on a national tour that also included God Church, Spitalfields and Poland. In 1985 and 1986, he appeared in Troilus and Cressida.

Armstrong took on what is perhaps his best-known stage role in Les Misérables' original London production in 1985: Thénardier. In the song "Master of the House," Thénardier and his wife, played by Susan Jane Tanner, are innkeepers whose shady activities are revealed. Thénardier was described by Armstrong as "a gruesome and comedic character."

Armstrong, Sue Jane Tanner, and Roger Allam, among the first cast members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, were among the first to be cast. He was instrumental in fleshing out his character, particularly in the second act song "Dog Eats Dog." "Because it is different to other musicals," Les Misérables' success surprised him. It's different because it is both a sung musical and a little operatic; I didn't think it would be very popular." After a year as a result of the repetition, he became dissatisfied with it and moved on to other things.

He appears on Original London Cast Recording. He reprised his role as Mme, partnering Jenny Galloway as Mme. Thénardier of Les Misérables - The Dream Cast in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in October 1995, which was filmed and released on DVD. Matt Lucas played Thénardier in the 25th anniversary concert, although he also appeared in the role of Thénardier.

Armstrong received a nomination in two categories: Outstanding Achievement by an Actor in a Musical for Les Misérables and Actor of the Year for The Crucible and The Winter's Tale. He was nominated for the Olivier Award in 1988 for the role of Barabas in a RSC production of The Jew of Malta and the Captain in a National Theatre production of The Father by August Strindberg. "The magnificent actor Alun Armstrong, who is the life's imploding center, is the one who decides whether or not eat." Mr. Armstrong seems to have been devoured by his inner demons by dinner's end."

He appeared as Baker's Wife on the Phoenix Theatre from 1989-90. The production, directed by Trevor Nunn, received rave reviews but it didn't attract large audiences and ended after 56 performances. He had been nominated for the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement of the Year by an Actor in a Musical.

In 1994, Armstrong received the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Sweeney Todd in the National Theatre's 1993 revival of the musical. Julia McKenzie, co-star and Best Musical Revival, was also awarded the Best Actress in a Musical.

Armstrong appeared in Terry Johnson's Insignificance in 1995, and he played Hamm in Samuel Beckett's Endgame in 1996. Willy Loman appeared in Death of a Salesman's 1996-97 National Theatre production. He appeared in a Donmar Warehouse production directed by Sam Mendes in 1997–98. "We don't know Alun Armstrong until the second act of three acts, but the entire evening is dominated by him." He barks, bleats, and yells around the room, grabbing Hildy and the show by the scruff of the neck, causing the performance to a climax."

Armstrong was the lead in Shelagh Stephenson's 2002 play Mappa Mundi, replacing Ian Holm, who died due to sickness. In 2006, he returned to the stage to appear in Trevor Nunn's The Royal Hunt of the Sun at the National Theatre. In a performance of My Fair Lady starring Annalene Beechey and Anthony Andrews, he appeared in Alfred Doolittle at the Proms in 2012. At the Theatre Royal, Bath's Ustinov Studio, Armstrong appears in a 2014 revival of Ionesco's black comedy Exit the King.

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