Why Richard Armitage IS Francis Dolarhyde … and you should love him anyway, part 3 [guest post by @FrauVonElmDings]

[Continued from here. Same comments policy in effect.]

***

Part three: Why Richard Armitage IS Francis Dolarhyde

Now we’re ready to understand why Richard Armitage took on the role of Francis Dolarhyde. Though, first things first: I simply couldn’t resist photoshopping two of my dogs into hannibalistic understudies.

As Richard Armitage stated of late in an interview, “I’m not really into fairytales and happy endings. I think it’s why I die a lot on screen and only got married once.” I would like to expand on that: as I’m a natural-born dreamer (Venus square Neptune) I recognize a fellow when I see one (Mr. A shares the same aspect). It is just that he simply doesn’t believe that he is worth a happy fairytale ending (at least as of yet). His dreams, however, are big (Neptune conjunct Jupiter) — maybe too big to share them with anyone.

On entering the eighth house of his horoscope on his forty-second birthday (2013), he arrived at a period of six years in his life in which he will have to deal with themes of life and death and sex and power issues. As the cusp of this house falls into the sign of Scorpio, Armitage is likely to meet and work with a lot of scorpionic and plutonic people (as Pluto is the ruler of Scorpio). In fact, as he entered Scorpio on his journey around his horoscope-clock, roughly around his fortieth birthday (as I hypothesize) the “Scorpios” would start to come forth from that point on. The first was Peter Jackson (a Scorpio) followed by Crucible director Yael Farber, who has a “Hades-Moon” in Scorpio (if her date of birth, which I’ve found after some digging on the web, is correct), and now he’s about to work together on Hannibal with Mads Mikkelsen, the personification of the Scorpio-theme: a Scorpio with a Hades-Moon in Scorpio as well. As a side note: Jodie Foster, who played FBI agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), has a Hades-Moon in Virgo just like Mr. A. And just like him, she has almost always played “dark” roles. Yet as a Scorpio, Jodie Foster’s choices were still darker than his.

Back to Dolarhyde: If we read Red Dragon the events leading Dolarhyde’s evil side first to develop and then to take over his psyche are explained well enough and — of course — the ultimate core theme of the Hades-Moon can be found there (doubled through mother and grandmother in this case).

The “mother issues” of the Hades-Moon can fall on the bad side or, there can simply be an unusually and intensely strong bond between mother and child. Armitage’s mother is known to have been very supportive of his vocational aspirations from the very beginning. Almost always some kind of life-endangering encounter occurs in the early years of the individual, be it from a difficult birth, or other near-death experiences. Mr. A’s often expressed fear of water/drowning because of an early childhood accident comes to mind. In my case, almost died at the age of two, because my mother choose a bad time for my measles vaccination (which was done with live virus then) and I almost drowned at age 10 (while my gran was helplessly watching from afar) because of a sudden exhaustion / cramp while swimming in deep water. While there is absolutely no indication that Mr. A was abused as a child, a certain undertone of emotional struggle is there — everyone who has read / heard some of his interviews must have noticed comments like “of course we wouldn’t talk about such things (as a profession in the arts) at home.”

In Mr. A’s horoscope there is not only the Hades-Moon which points to mother issues, but also a Sun square Neptune (our dreams) and Sun quindecile Mars (our actions). And this is the point where the father enters the picture. The Sun represents our father’s influence on us, and these two aspects are not smooth and friendly, but challenging ones. The actions of the child may not have been approved by the father through the Mars aspect and through the Neptune aspect there might have been quite some difficulties in understanding and/or accepting the child’s dreams and “soft side.” So this arrow strikes home, I think. When asked on the press tour of Into the Storm who he’d save if he ever encountered a situation like the one in the movie, he answered without hesitation “My mum,” and added, “Or if I had a dog, I’d probably save him.” Now at this point, let us assume he’s just sure, that his dad would be perfectly capable of rescuing himself.

No one chooses to become an actor by accident. Roleplaying “family constellations” are a big part in today’s psychological therapy. So there may have been a deep urge to explore methods of expressing oneself and understanding psychological mechanisms in the safe environment of a stage or a film set — instead of lurking in the dark and killing people in their sleep in reality.

In playing (and dying) as Thorin and Proctor, Armitage seems to have reconnected with an emotional side he’d buried deep inside (poetically spoken: “a well of unshed tears”) – or he wouldn’t have set up a memorial for his dead character on the scene and clearly confess to lots of tears / emotional turmoil after his last take. On playing Proctor, he stated “I shed so many tears during those 12 weeks, I sometimes felt like I had nothing left.”

***

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” (Mark Twain)

***

Those with a Pluto-Moon conjunction in their horoscope can normally keep intruders out of their personal lives. They can wear Pluto’s helmet of invisibility or he’ll assist to “mask” them in another way. In a way, it’s perfect for an actor. So it’s easy to fool others with it. But at the end of the day, you’ll always have to face your naked self in the mirror.

The “lunar-food and healing” for the Hades-Moon in Virgo, according to Judy Hall’s book would be:

This Hades-Moon needs recognition and reward […] an appreciation for all that Virgo Moon so quietly performs for others is solicited, but Virgo is too modest and self-deprecating (or too falsely humble) to ask for this directly. […] Healing lies in developing the ability to accept oneself as perfect as one is now. To allow into consciousness the totality of feelings and emotions and embrace them all as acceptable and right. The Virgoan capacity for analysis may be turned inward to help in this process, but only if this is accompanied by loving acceptance, not criticism.

So for everyone out there who fears that Mr. A might lose his “light” in the process of becoming Francis Dolarhyde: to me it looks like he might be able to solve some (maybe unconscious) issues from the past with this role for himself. If he does so, he will rise like a phoenix out of it, ready for new and completely different roles as he is about to set foot in the energetic and curious sign of Sagittarius. Well, maybe there’s a real big martial arts movie already lined up.

So — if my theory is true — and if I’m really unlucky, now there’s a whole bunch of people out there, their Pluto square to my Moon and enraged because I dared to dissect a “wholly holy” topic (pun intended). Of course I am really curious to hear from anyone who checked her horoscope and might confirm my thoughts on the “moonstruck”-fandom of Mr. A.

For those ones who are about to check this on www.astro.com: his Moon (I hypothesize) is on 20° in Virgo, so if your Pluto would be between 18° – 22° degrees in Virgo, the conjunction would be felt strongest. Lesser but still recognizable in a wider orb, lets say from 14° – 26° degrees. Pluto moves back and forth a lot during this time, so you’re no automatically “nearer” if your birthdate falls right in the middle of the years mentioned! And of course, this is just one aspect in an ocean of possible other strong interaspects.

Try to be kind. If astrology is still just not your cup of tea, I hear you. But everyone has to deal with overwhelming feelings in his own way – mine always will be the light of the stars and the scalpel of the word.  So to lighten up the collective mood a bit, if necessary, I’d like to end this with the last song of the amazing movie Harold & Maude (1971):

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are …

(Yusuf aka Cat Stevens)

***

Comments can be left here or also tweeted to @FrauvonElmDings.

~ by Servetus on February 9, 2015.