Richard Armitage on Robin Hood @ The UK TV Archive

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RICHARD ARMITAGE ON ROBIN HOOD

Having become a heart-throb to thousands of women after playing romantic hero John Thornton in the BBC's costume drama North And South a couple of years ago, Richard Armitage is set to shock his adoring fans as anti-hero and bad seed Sir Guy of Gisborne in Dominic Minghella's stylish and witty version of the Robin Hood legend. But Richard himself is more than happy to embrace the dark side, as he tells Judy Leighton.

"I'm having fun playing the bad guy because you can be really quite vile to people and it's very amusing to do that," laughs the 6'2" tall, dark-haired and blue-eyed Leicester-born actor, who manages to turn heads even without the help of period costume. "It's enjoyable because you get to express all those dark qualities that you can't always do in everyday life," he continues, though he does stick up slightly for Sir Guy: "In my head Gisborne is his own hero; what he is fighting for he completely believes in, I've convinced myself!" he smiles.

A dispossessed lord, very ambitious and very much a social climber, Gisborne has been babysitting Robin Hood's wealth and lands – so when Robin returns from the Holy Land to claim them it's not good news for Gisborne.

"They're opposite sides of a similar coin – they were contemporaries of each other and they've grown in very different directions," explains Richard. "While Robin is the hero, Gisborne is the anti-hero. He wants the trappings of fame, fortune and popularity but he just doesn't have the qualities to achieve that." He's also a rival to Robin when it comes to Marian.

"He's very much there in the stakes," says 35-year-old Richard. "His initial move towards her is that she could be a token bride. She's a lady, she's the daughter of the old sheriff, she carries great status with her – and also she's obviously the most desirable woman in the vicinity. But actually he does fall for her and when Robin is made an outlaw it is very convenient for Gisborne because it sets him in a much more favourable position as a marriage option. Love aside, the prospect of Marian going into the forest and living as a vagrant, although the romantic in us would hope that she would do that, actually on a practical level she has got to think of her father and Gisborne knows this. Whether or not she will ever love him doesn't really matter, because she may well be bound to him by those practical voices."

But despite being the Sheriff's weapon of destruction, Gisborne finds himself becoming affected by his feelings for Marian. "She does unravel him slightly towards the end of this series," Richard reveals. "It's been very interesting playing moments where he is doing the most awful slaughter and then in the next moment he is declaring how much he loves this young girl. It was quite a challenge to work out what kind of guy could separate himself like that. Mind you, I'm sure that these kind of tyrants in history have been able to go home to their wives and say I love you!"

The awful slaughter he's referring to is on behalf of the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, played by Keith Allen – who Richard says at first he was rather nervous about working with. "Initially I took very baby steps with him because he's quite a volatile man but actually it's turned out that our relationship character-wise and off screen has developed," says Richard. "I really enjoy the scenes with him – the best fun has been working with Keith."

He's also enjoyed the physical side of the role, as he explains.

"We all went over for two weeks before filming started to what they termed the Hood Academy, where we did riding in the morning and then we went to the studio and did fighting, sword fighting, and archery in the afternoon. You've got grown men from 20 to 40 all in a room being 10 years old again and loving it. When guest artists come out to work on all the different episodes, you can see in their eyes that they're about to have the greatest adventure of their lives. It's so appealing!"

Though it turned into quite competitive sessions which even spilled over into non-Robin Hood activities such as go-karting (at which Joe Armstrong, who plays Allan-a-Dale, trounced everyone) it all helped bond the cast into a family unit. "It really is," Richard agrees, "and what's great is that the atmosphere has remained buoyant and jolly and everyone gets on brilliantly."

Although he admits he hasn't quite got the same relationship with his horse... "As soon as you point a horse towards open land, when it has been standing around all day, you can guarantee that it will want to run in that direction, so when they said 'Action!' – and to be honest the horses understand 'Action!' – they go whether you kick them or not ... and my horse bolted," he recalls with a laugh. "It wanted to run for its life and I was on the back of it. Everyone was shouting at me to stop, which made me laugh because I thought I actually really do want to stop and if I had any control over this horse I would be stopping it!

"It was okay and I didn't get thrown – but it's very amusing working with animals in general, particularly horses because they have no concept of bodily function. Once in the middle of a love scene with Marian where we're standing by a horse, the horse did an enormous dump... it's very amusing! Lucy's [Griffiths, who plays Marian] a trouper and carried on, but I was crying with laughter."

His first brush with horses came during his time with the circus when he was 17 – coincidentally in Budapest, where Robin Hood is filmed.

"My mum always finds it amusing when she reads that I ran away to the circus," Richard grins, explaining, "I got my Equity card by going to Budapest and working in the circus – that was my very first experience of showbusiness.

Since then he's racked up roles in many high-profile TV series, including Sparkhouse, Cold Feet, Between The Sheets and, most recently, The Golden Hour – plus a starring role as Claude Monet in the BBC docu-drama The Impressionists earlier this year – and those teenage days in the circus seem a long time ago, especially as he found Budapest so changed.

"Budapest is an unrecognisable place to me – it's opened its eyes and woken up. At that time it was 1990 when the [Berlin] Wall had come down the year before and it was just waking up from its Communist days, so my heart did a little flip when they said we'd spend six months here filming, because of my previous experience. But getting here and seeing why we were here – the forest is extraordinary and the studio and set is absolutely perfect; there's nowhere else we could do this. And now it's such a vibrant, exciting place – we've really enjoyed being here."

Ironically, it could have been a lot closer to home for Richard if Sherwood Forest was still as intact as in Robin's day. Originally from Leeds, he was based in Leicester for many years and has fond memories of the area.

"My mum's sister lived in Nottinghamshire and as kids we regularly used to go – before Center Parcs invaded – up to Nottingham and spend quite a lot of time there," he recalls. "I remember having day trips out to the forest – what little there is left of it. And yes, I do remember the Great Oak; you can walk underneath it."

Although in his youth Richard admits to being more into The Lord Of The Rings books than the Robin Hood story, he does recall being mightily impressed with one particular incarnation...

"As far as heroes were concerned, Michael Praed as Robin Hood – I remember opening Smash Hits and thinking yeah, that's what I want to be like, and getting a black marker pen and painting hairs on my chest as a 10-year-old because I wanted to look like Robin Hood!" he admits, laughing.

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