(Photo: Getty Images)

Richard Armitage has just been cast in Fool Me Once, an adaptation of Harlan Coben's thriller novel of the same name. It's the third Coben adaptation that Armitage has starred in following 2020's Stay Close and 2021's The Stranger. The English actor, 51, is also known for his roles in The Hobbit, Spooks, and Hannibal, but keeps a relatively low profile off-screen. So, here are 10 interesting things about him that you may not know about him.

1. As a kid, he was more into music than drama.

Armitage grew up in Leicester, England, the son of an engineer and a secretary. "I've always been creative," he told Scones and Crackers. "As a kid, I liked painting and playing a few musical instruments. I started playing guitar in primary school, took up the cello when I was 11, then ditched that for the flute which I never really enjoyed. I've still got the cello in my wardrobe." 

2. Before his acting career took off, he quite literally joined the circus. 

However, his time working with a circus in Budapest, Hungary was rather less romantic than it sounds. "I remember being a little bit underfed. It was just at the end of the '90s and Hungary was still coming out of Communism and there wasn't much food to be had," Armitage told The Independent. "It was messy and a bit subversive, but I kind of liked it. You slept in the accommodation in the circus, which was next to the elephants. I could smell the elephants; there was a zoo at the back of the circus."

3. He was in the running to play Pennywise in the 2017 movie adaptation of Stephen King's It.

But ultimately, of course, he lost out to Bill Skarsgård. Intriguingly, Armitage told Anthem Magazine that "there’s probably an audition tape floating around of me naked going crazy."

4. He believes he has, on occasion, been cast for his looks.

Armitage discussed this pretty matter-of-factly in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. "A couple of times I’ve been hired for something and I go, ‘Oh, I thought I was here because of my brain, but actually it’s because you want totty on screen. I’ve done all this character analysis and you just want me to take my shirt off,’" he said. "People talk about the power of the male gaze. But the female gaze is just as interesting to talk about. It’s a marketing tool like any other."

5. He is very modest about his own talents.

Despite racking up more than 50 screen credits according to IMDb, Armitage retains a grounded view of his own skillset. "I know there are people out there who are far better at all this than I am, and I feel my only forte is that I have the discipline to put my head down and work," he told the Daily Telegraph last year. "I've always felt like this – in dance, music, and acting. I’ve never had that natural, God-given genius, for instance, but when I was younger I knew I could become a fairly average cello player if I worked hard enough."

6. He is a big Lady Gaga fan.

Last summer, Armitage attended the singer's huge stadium show in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and it's safe to say he enjoyed it.

(Photo: Twitter / @RCArmitage)

7. In real life, he is quite shy.

And he has described this as "bloody annoying," telling The Independent: "I'll spend a whole evening at a party asking everyone else about themselves. I'm not being self-deprecating; it's because I'm too shy to talk about myself. So people come away from the evening actually having learned nothing about me."

8. He rarely talks about his personal life.

However, Armitage did confirm in a 2020 interview that he is in a relationship – "a good one." Asked about starting a family, he told the Daily Telegraph: "I would need to do it in a way which was either through adoption or surrogacy, because of the nature of my relationship. I'd have to sit down very pragmatically and work it out."

9. He isn't just an actor, but a writer too.

Armitage's debut novel, a thriller called Geneva, is due to be published this coming October. According to booksellers Waterstones, the book is about a "Nobel Prize-winning scientist with the initial onset of Alzheimer's disease [who is thrown] into a world of conspiracy and conflicted loyalties where her closest friend could prove to be her deadliest foe." Color us very intrigued... Harlan Coben has already described it as "one of the best thrillers I've ever read."

10. In career terms, he thinks of starring in The Hobbit trilogy as a bit of an aberration. 

Huge movie stardom – and everything that comes with it – is not really his vibe. "It was not something I had ever imagined for myself," Armitage told The Times. "I was happy working on Spooks, in my little two-up, two-down house, and I didn't have designs on going to Hollywood – and still don’t, really. I think that was a moment, maybe my peak. I had that experience, I did the premieres and all that, and now I can go back to being me."

Do you have a favorite performance by Richard Armitage?