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Alun Armstrong

Alun Armstrong is an English actor whose career has moved comfortably between film, television and the stage, often making the most of characters with rough edges, complicated motives or a sharp comic streak. Born Alan Armstrong in Annfield Plain, County Durham, on 17 July 1946, he grew up as the son of a coal miner. A teacher at Consett Grammar School encouraged him to try acting, and an early performance as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew anticipated a role he would later revisit with the Royal Shakespeare Company. After studying fine art at Newcastle University and working jobs including bricklaying and gravedigging, Armstrong returned to acting as an assistant stage manager at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. His screen debut came in Get Carter in 1971 after he wrote to MGM when he learned the film would be shooting in Newcastle. A long run of supporting film roles followed, including Lieutenant Lecourbe in The Duellists, Torquil in Krull, Mornay in Braveheart, the High Constable in Sleepy Hollow and Baltus Hafez in The Mummy Returns. His first cinematic lead was the vampire Maxwell Randall in the unusual 1987 snooker musical Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire. Television has given Armstrong an especially broad range of parts. He appeared in Days of Hope, set in his native County Durham, and later played Austin Donohue in Our Friends in the North. His many Dickens roles include Daniel Peggotty in David Copperfield, Inspector Bucket in Bleak House and the Flintwinch brothers in Little Dorrit. For many viewers, however, he is most closely associated with New Tricks, in which he played Brian Lane, a recovering alcoholic and former detective with an exceptional memory for old cases. Armstrong’s stage career is just as substantial. He spent nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, originated Thénardier in the London production of Les Misérables and won the 1994 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for Sweeney Todd. Across all three mediums, his work is defined less by conventional leading-man polish than by the character actor’s pleasure in specificity: a voice, a posture and a carefully judged mixture of gravity and mischief.