Alun Armstrong

Alun Armstrong is an English character actor born Alan Armstrong on 17 July 1946 in Annfield Plain, County Durham. His father worked as a coal miner, and both parents served as Methodist lay preachers. Armstrong attended Annfield Plain Junior School before moving on to Consett Grammar School, where a teacher introduced him to acting through Shakespeare productions. During his lower sixth year, he played Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, a role he would later reprise with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1964, he participated in the National Youth Theatre summer school, though his northern accent and background left him feeling out of place among the other participants. He subsequently studied fine art at Newcastle University, but was sent down after two years when he stopped attending classes.

Before committing fully to acting, Armstrong worked alongside a bricklayer and as a gravedigger. He eventually returned to the stage, beginning as an assistant stage manager at the Cambridge Arts Theatre and then joining a Theatre in Education company connected to the Sheffield Repertory Theatre. He also appeared in several Radio 4 dramas during this period.

Armstrong made his screen debut in the 1971 film Get Carter, having written directly to MGM after learning the production was filming in Newcastle. Director Mike Hodges, who was seeking local actors, invited him to meet and subsequently cast him. His early film work included a small role as a British soldier at the Battle of Arnhem in A Bridge Too Far (1977) and the part of Lieutenant Lecourbe, a French soldier, in Ridley Scott's The Duellists the same year. He played the bandit leader Torquil in the 1983 fantasy film Krull, and took his first cinematic lead in Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1987), directed by Alan Clarke, in which he portrayed the titular vampire Maxwell Randall and performed the song "I Bite Back." Later film credits include an SO-13 officer in Patriot Games (1992), the Scottish noble Mornay in Braveheart (1995), the Egyptian cult leader Baltus Hafez in The Mummy Returns (2001), and Saint Peter in Millions (2004). Smaller film roles included the High Constable in Sleepy Hollow (1999), Cardinal Jinette in Van Helsing (2004), Magistrate Fang in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005), and Uncle Garrow in Eragon (2006).

On stage, Armstrong spent nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company and originated the role of Monsieur Thénardier in the West End production of Les Misérables. He won an Olivier Award for his performance in the title role of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In 1981, he appeared on Broadway in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, in which he played Wackford Squeers and Mr. Wagstaff. The eight-hour stage adaptation was subsequently filmed for television in 1982.

Armstrong accumulated more than 80 television roles across his career. During the 1970s he appeared in episodes of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Porridge, Public Eye, and The Sweeney. He played Joe Gowlan in the 1974 miniseries The Stars Look Down, based on the A. J. Cronin novel, and appeared in Ken Loach's Days of Hope (1975), set in County Durham. In a 2007 interview, Armstrong identified Days of Hope as a particular favourite, noting that it dramatised his own history and background. He played a strict deputy headmaster in Willy Russell's 1977 television play Our Day Out and appeared in the 1981 Yorkshire Television drama Get Lost!

Armstrong's affinity for the works of Charles Dickens, which began when he read David Copperfield aloud at school, informed several significant television roles. He portrayed Daniel Peggotty in the BBC's David Copperfield (1999), a role for which he turned down an offer from Clint Eastwood. Additional BBC Dickens adaptations included Inspector Bucket in Bleak House (2005), the dual roles of Jeremiah and Ephraim Flintwinch in Little Dorrit (2008), and Hiram Grewgious in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (2012). He also appeared in the 1999 ITV miniseries Oliver Twist as Captain Fleming.

Among his other notable television work, Armstrong played Austin Donohue, a character based on politician T. Dan Smith, in Our Friends in the North (1996), and portrayed 18th-century politician Henry Fox in Aristocrats (1999). In the 2000 television film This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, he played George Oldfield, the Assistant Chief Constable for Crime at West Yorkshire Police, earning a Royal Television Society award nomination for the performance. He co-starred with Brenda Blethyn in Between the Sheets (2003) and played John Southouse, mentor to William Garrow, across three series of Garrow's Law from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, he portrayed the Earl of Northumberland in the BBC2 adaptations of Henry IV, Parts I and II, with his son Joe Armstrong playing Northumberland's son Hotspur in the same productions. Armstrong joined the cast of the Showtime horror series Penny Dreadful in 2014, playing Vincent Brand, an actor who employs Frankenstein's monster at the Grand Guignol.

Armstrong is perhaps most widely recognised for playing Brian Lane, an obsessive and socially inept recovering alcoholic with a remarkable memory for case details, in the BBC One series New Tricks. In August 2012, following cast comments to the Radio Times that criticised aspects of the series' writing and prompted a rebuttal from writer-director Julian Simpson, Armstrong announced he would depart the show after its tenth series.