Armitage flens? or, how I love a guy who can cry

I think I mentioned that this was my favorite picture from this week.

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Richard Armitage in costume as Thorin Oakenshield on the last day of principal photography for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, saying how much he’s looking forward to returning to New Zealand to see everyone again, in A Hobbit’s Tale: The Journey Begins. Source: Heirs of Durin

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Classic shy Armitage head duck. A feature of the “modest Armitage” and the “bashful Armitage” tropes, but.

What I wanted to know after watching this about ten times is — was he about to get teary?

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We know that he cries and from his own statements that he’s not unreasonably ashamed to admit it.

Moments I’m aware of:

Daily Mail Weekend Magazine, September 6, 2006:

Richard was packing boxes in a warehouse when he heard he’d been accepted by the RSC. Getting a job there was a milestone,’ he says. ‘When the call came, there was no one else in the place. Just me and these boxes. I was in floods of tears because I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t have to go back there. On Mondy morning I could go to a rehearsal room and start doing Shakespeare.’

and same source:

I had a period of 18 months when I wasn’t acting. I worked at a laser gun place and took front-of-house jobs in the theatre. I wasn’t clinically depressed but I was down. But I’d go to drama classes to make sure I was keeping my skill going. I finally hit something real inside me in one of those classes. I’d had little glimmers before but then in one class with an American director I just hit something. From that moment on I was kind of fearless because I knew I had it in me. I knew I had the instrument. I know it’s a cliché but it was like a drug. It was like: ‘I want to know what that feels like again because I can’t do that in my real life. I can’t cry like that because it’s not civilised.’ That’s when I thought it was really worth it.

Regarding water stunts for his role as Heinz Kruger, Daily Telegraph, July 22, 2011:

“I am just not a water baby. I can swim but I just don’t. Everyone else is jumping in and I’ll go, ’You know what? I’ll just stand on the side.’ I did four weeks of scuba training for the sequence and made myself do fifty lengths every day. Then we were at the bottom of a tank and there was ten metres above you.” All 15 or 16 stone of him shudders at the memory of the moment the divers confiscated his goggles and breathing line. “They had put a microphone in the water so you could hear them say, ‘Just waiting for the bubbles to clear.’ I’m at the bottom of the tank thinking, I’ve taken a deep breath but I haven’t got enough air. When they asked me to do it again I was sitting in the dressing room crying, ‘I can’t!’

Christmas message of December 24, 2011:

The places we have been to and the things we have seen, have surpassed all my expectations. I was very choked up as the plane left Wellington on Weds, it really has become home and to all my new friends there and my old friends here I would like to raise a glass for the festive season.

London premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, December 12, 2012, at 11:55:

“This is [the premiere] I was nervous about, because I thought I might step onto the carpet and start crying. And I had a dream last night that I got lost outside the cinema and I couldn’t find my way in. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s so great to come to London and [pauses] bring it home.”

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Are there other such statements in interviews?

And was he getting teary on the last day of shooting? Who would blame him? Watch the vid here, at about 9:02 and decide for yourself.

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In a week where it was really hard to respect my own emotions, when I would have preferred to pretend I didn’t have any, it was unbelievably fortuitous to have the reminder of my crush revealing himself as leading with the feelings.

I often feel these photos pop up just when I need to see them. This was a picture I needed to see, and reflect on, this week in particular.

Thanks, Mr. Armitage.

~ by Servetus on March 23, 2013.