Is Richard Armitage's secret cameo in Avengers 2... or the Spooks movie?

DIGITAL SPY
By Emma Dibdin
Tuesday, Aug 19 2014, 4:10am



Interviewing Richard Armitage is never less than a pleasure, and our chat with him and on-screen son Max Deacon for Into the Storm was no exception.

But aside from finding out which Hobbit cast members Armitage would take with him into a real-life storm, this interview was also notable for an intriguing titbit towards the end.

"I'm doing another movie after I've finished on stage," Armitage told us. "But I can't tell you what it is. But you'll know!"

Intriguing, no? The fact that he's so cagey about details suggests that this is a role with some form of NDA attached, which immediately makes us think blockbuster. So we at Digital Spy have put our deerstalkers on for a spot of what we'll call deductive speculation.

Given that Armitage appeared in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger as Nazi spy and assassin Heinz Kruger, our first thought was that he might crop up in The Avengers: Age of Ultron.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a591143/is-richard-armitages-secret-cameo-in-avengers-2-or-the-spooks-movie.html

Hayley Atwell: From Captain America to Jimi Hendrix

TELEGRAPH

By Chris Harvey

8:00AM BST 10 Aug 2013

Hayley Atwell’s beauty is the first thing you notice about her. She walks out of a rehearsal room near London Bridge into an outdoor café, and it almost makes me laugh. If there were a kit for making a film star, her dark flashing eyes and full lips would be included in the box. What’s more surprising is that she turns out to be so funny.

She’s recently returned from Comic-Con, the American convention that celebrates all things fantasy and sci-fi. She was there because in the Marvel Universe she is Peggy Carter, the wartime British agent girlfriend of Captain America himself, as seen in the 2011 blockbuster The First Avenger. It sounds like a strange experience.

“What is weird is walking down the streets seeing people dressed as superheroes but then picking their nose or running for the bus,” she says. “That’s really surreal. You’re like, 'I’m sure Wonder Woman doesn’t eat burgers slouched over a bench like that.’ It was very funny, but the level of commitment is quite humbling. There’s an innocence about them as a fan base, it’s not aggressive, but they really do love that world. I approach Peggy Carter as I would any character, then take all the make-up off and go home and be myself. But for the fans, those worlds live for longer within them.”

I ask if the films – some of the most lucrative franchises in contemporary Hollywood – pay as well as they’re said to, mentioning Robert Downey jnr’s reported $75 million earnings for The Avengers. “Really? Is that true?” Atwell gapes. “Well, he is also an executive producer. It completely varies according to your star power, how big your name is.”

But is it life-changing? “That’s a very personal question,” she says, adopting a clipped RP tone. “I think anything is life-changing money if you’re doing something you love and earn a living from it, because it takes you beyond doing a job just for survival.”

Next up is something for love. She’s rehearsing the dual role of Sylvia, the trapped, lonely wife of a repressed homosexual man in Fifties London, and the independent, supportive friend of an identically named gay man in the present, in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play The Pride, which opens at Trafalgar Studios later this month, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It’s an interesting choice, not least because Atwell’s last stage outing was in Kaye Campbell’s The Faith Machine two years ago, also directed by Lloyd.

“I like working with them as people and it’s nice to do something that’s at least half modern,” she says. She’s referring to the way casting directors look at her voluptuous figure and see the perfect Forties heroine. “I suppose physically I suit that era. It’s wonderful to look like a period heroine, there’s something very beautiful and romantic about that. But I think there’s so much more going on behind my eyes and in my head than just looking a certain way.”

The play juxtaposes the way that changing attitudes affect the lives of people who are alike in spirit but living in different eras. The earlier Sylvia is “fragile and sensitive, and has suffered from an illness that nowadays we would call depression. I think Sylvia loves her husband deeply and his unhappiness causes her great unhappiness.

“I can relate to bouts of the blues or moments when self-destructive thoughts are a way of dealing with your surroundings. Some people, if they’re going through a difficult time they’ll lash out, and then you have people, like myself, who direct it inwards. I’m much more of an internal person than an external one, I think.”

Is there a temptation to put theatre to one side when your career is at its most bankable, I wonder, when you’re “hot”, as Atwell is now?

“Oh really?” She laughs. “'So hot right now’ – I feel like I’m in Zoolander. I think there’s a fear. The fear-based mentality would be to go, 'I’ve got to capitalise on this right now.’ I think it can be detrimental because the minute you’re hot or 'in’ the next step is to be not hot, or out. So you’re only just waiting for the time when you’re not considered cool. I think if I’m interested in my work, then life will forge its own path.”

READ MORE HERE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/10234252/Hayley-Atwell-From-Captain-America-to-Jimi-Hendrix.html

Comic-Con: Marvel Screens Their Latest One-Shot, Agent Carter! (Hayley Atwell)

Super Hero Hype

by Silas Lesnick

July 19, 2013

As they did last year with their "Phase One" short film finale, "Item 47," Marvel Studios hosted a special San Diego premiere screening of the new 15-minute "Agent Carter" short, which will be included as a bonus feature on the Iron Man 3 Blu-ray release. While it's well-known that the film features Captain America: The First Avenger star Hayley Atwell returning in the role of Peggy Carter, the film also offers a wide variety of surprise cameos. We'll refrain from revealing the two big ones at the end, but if you want to stay completely spoiler-free, stop reading now.

"After the premiere of 'Captain America,' I went straight back to London to do a play," says Atwell of how the project came about. "I thought that was the end of it. Then months and months and months later, I got a call from Lou [D'Esposito] saying that this was something that we could make together. It was as new to me as it was to the fans."

"Agent Carter" begins with the final scene of Captain America as Peggy says goodbye to Chris Evans' Steve Rogers. Jumping ahead a year, we find Peggy working in a government office and none too pleased with her lot in life. She's the victim of gender politics of the day and, despite being an agent, winds up primarily doing glorified secretary work. That all changes one night, however, when she takes matters into her own hands and takes on a middle-of-the-night mission issued by a mysterious voice (Iron Man 3 writer-director Shane Black in a voice-only cameo).

We won't say where "Agent Carter" winds up, but it's safe to say that Peggy Carter has quite a potential future in the Marvel cinematic universe. In fact, it was Marvel Studios executive producer Victoria Alonso who shouted out during the Q&A, "Will you do the TV series, Hayley?"

READ MORE AT:  http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/178281-comic-con-marvel-screens-their-latest-one-shot-agent-carter

Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell join Close Enough 22 April, 2013 | By Michael Rosser (SCREEN DAILY)

Romantic drama about two war photographers will be directed by Song for Marion’s Paul Andrew Williams.

Hiddleston will play famous war photographer Robert Capa while Atwell will portray the equally famous first female war photographer Gerda Toro.

The story is set during their years in Paris in the mid-1930s and leads to a dramatic conclusion during the Spanish Civil War.

It will be directed by Paul Andrew Williams, the writer-director behind Song for Marion and London to Brighton.

Principal photography is set to begin in June 2013.

Production companies are Camera Entertainment BV (Netherlands), Kanzaman S.A. (Spain) and Steel Mill Pictures (UK).

READ MORE: http://www.screendaily.com/news/hiddleston-atwell-join-close-enough/5054124.article?blocktitle=Latest-News&contentID=1846#

Hayley Atwell Left Stunned By Meryl Streep Meeting (CONTACT MUSIC)

Hayley Atwell is still starstruck after receiving a personal compliment from Meryl Streep on her acting talents, calling the encounter her proudest moment of 2012.

The Captain America: The First Avenger star was stunned when Oscar winner Streep introduced herself and began doling out praise, and admits the meeting was a career highlight.

When asked to name her proudest moment of the past year, she tells Britain's InStyle magazine, "Meeting Meryl Streep."

Atwell recalls, "She knew who I was and came up to compliment me on a performance. She was so utterly charming and at that moment I thought, 'Yes, sanity does exist in this industry.' If, like her, I focus on what matters? Then I'll be fine."


READ MORE: http://www.contactmusic.com/news/hayley-atwell-left-stunned-by-meryl-streep-meeting_3481522

Richard Armitage feels one with Thorin, soon the world will see him that way too

Michael Oliveira, The Canadian Press
Dec 10, 2012 06:00:00 AM

TORONTO - It won't be long before it becomes difficult to separate actor Richard Armitage from the character Thorin Oakenshield.

Armitage himself is already there.

The British actor is a familiar face in the U.K. for roles in the BBC dramas "North & South", "Robin Hood" and "Spooks." He's more anonymous in North America, perhaps best known for a small part in the recent hit "Captain America: The First Avenger."

But he'll no doubt soon be synonymous with the dwarf king he plays in the new Peter Jackson epic "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey."

Having spent some 18 months living as Thorin — after learning to talk like him, walk like him and looking in the mirror and seeing the face of a dwarf — Armitage said he lost himself in the character.

So much so that even his sleep was overrun with J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world.

"I started to dream in character," says Armitage during a recent interview in Toronto to promote the film, which opens Friday.

"I started to have Thorin's dreams, I had dreams of entering Erebor for the first time because that's what he dreams about — so I had dreams of that."

You might say Armitage began the preparation for his life-changing role as a child, when he had "The Hobbit" read to him in class and became a Tolkien fan.

"I read the book when I was 11 ... I remember picking it up for myself and sitting under the bedsheets with a torch and I really feel like it inspired my imagination. And if I really think back, it's probably one of the reasons why I became an actor, because my imagination was fired and those things that Tolkien really taps into — the secret doors, the keys, the code words, the scary threat of the darkness — I think those are the things that really appealed to me as a kid," he recalls.

Fast forward some 30 years later and Armitage again found himself lost in Tolkien's books, after winning the role of Thorin.

READ MORE: http://www.680news.com/entertainment/article/430000--richard-armitage-feels-one-with-thorin-soon-the-world-will-see-him-that-way-too

Tom Hiddleston: We Finally Get To See The Avengers Props Photo Tom Hiddleston Sent To Chris Evans And Chris Hemsworth 1 day ago by Natalie Zutter (CRUSHABLE)

Nearly half a year ago when promoting The Avengers, Tom Hiddleston told a cute anecdote about the first time he was in costume as Loki and got to see his castmates similarly suited up. His first scene with the group, you see, was actually at the very end of the movie. He told Access Hollywood that he got up to a little bit of Loki-style mischief:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEqe4opNvww

“There was one day, actually, where I ran amok in a lunch break and I stole the [Captain America] shield and the [Thor] hammer. We were in these underground tunnels in Cleveland; I literally had the shield in my hand and was holding the hammer aloft in my arm. I sent pictures to Chris [Evans] and Chris [Hemsworth] and was like, ‘Guys, I’m not giving them back.’”


Read more: http://crushable.com/entertainment/tom-hiddleston-chris-hemsworth-chris-evans-the-avengers-props-photo-730/ 

Richard Armitage and The Hobbit (Screen Rant)

Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield

In an interview with MTV, Armitage had the following thoughts to offer about the original Hobbit novel and how he’s approaching the task of portraying Thorin Oakenshield in cinematic form:

“I read ['The Hobbit'] quite a few times when I was young. I think going back to it as an adult is really interesting because it is a book that was, I think, was written for Tolkien’s children, but when you’re creating a piece on this scale, you have to really visualize it for a much broader audience. I think that’s the beauty of Tolkien. He does create very well-rounded, quite dangerous characters to play his protagonists. He risks scaring kids. He’s the original fantasy creator, and I think you have to invest those characters with the same gravity as if you were making a piece for adults. It was interesting coming back to it as an adult, re-reading it again, because it did have a simplicity to it, which I really like. I felt we could take those characters and really develop them beyond the book.”

Armitage has appeared in many a BBC TV series in recent years (including Strike Back, MI-5, and Robin Hood) but to U.S. moviegoers, he’s essentially a newcomer who briefly played a German secret agent/saboteur in Captain America.

It’ll be interesting to see what Armitage’s post-Hobbit career is like, for that reason. Could he suddenly become as ubiquitous as, say, Michael Fassbender or Idris Elba? Or will he keep a lower profile, a la Rings‘ star Viggo Mortensen? Only time will tell…

-

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey arrives in theaters around the U.S. on December 14th, 2012.
The Hobbit: There and Back Again will be released a year later on December 13th, 2013.
Source: LA Times, MTV


Read More:  http://screenrant.com/hobbit-image-philippa-boyens-richard-armitage-sandy-147132/

Review of Captain America

Captain America reviewed - part filmed in Manc and the 'Pool

Jonathan Schofield thinks Marvel Comics should be stopped licensing their products by law

Written by Jonathan Schofield. Published yesterday evening at 9:38 PM.

---

How many more Marvel Comics are there to wade through?
How many more loser turned hero characters are there hidden in the shallow pages of their graphic novels for movie companies to get Tommy Lee Jones to act in?

Captain America makes even the most pointless Bond movies of the Roger Moore era look like timeless classics.

If our lovely digital age hadn't made special effects so easy then possibly we'd have been saved the endless blither of ridiculous Marvel comic offshoots.
But it did make it easy, so here we are, drowning in a sea of films with multiple explosions and the emotional pull of a deflated phallus-shaped hen-party balloon in a wet Sunday morning gutter.
Captain America is more of the same, more ploughing of the barren Marvel Comic field, all made worse by terrible casting for the main character, and a plot which so closely resembles Raiders of the Lost Ark, it should be given an Oscar for cheekiness.
Back to 'Our Hero' who is so wooden you can almost see the grain. The big problem is that he’s so completely un-tough that selling marshmallows would be deemed unreasonably macho for him – and this after he’s had the serum given to him that boosts Charles Atlas-like his puny torso into something only actors or men with very small brains can ever be bothered achieving.
Skip America’s folksy name in the film, away from the heroics, is Steve Rogers, which could be the first words of a very rude sentence. In his case the third word would be ‘sheep’.
Roger’s real name is Chris Evans. This is gratifying, because it marries him with a ginger-haired DJ turned One Show presenter who is in every way the utter antithesis of a superhero, unless Marvel Comics has invented a superhero called Colonel Smug.
Atwell tells Chris Evans he shares a name with a One Show presenter
Meanwhile the film has the big stars acting by numbers, as though not sure which superhero film they’re in, just knowing that it’s worth several more trips to Cannes and a third home in the Hamptons. So we have the aforesaid Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Samuel L Jackson, Stanley Tucci, Richard Armitage ad infinitum.
Aside from Tucci - who acts with at least a memory of the verve that made him respected - they’re all piss-poor.
Hugo Weaving, Nasty Nazi, wonders which Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-off he's in
Still there’s one character that you can’t keep your eyes off.
And surprise, surprise, it's a woman.
According to the Law of Marvel, women are a tea and biscuits mumsy interruption in a teenager’s Call of Duty blow ‘em up moment. Or maybe they flash past, all thighs and breasts, for a snog at the end.
But here we have Hayley Atwell, with her cool English appeal. Folks she should be the superhero. She’s certainly a fantasy figure. She bosses the screen in ways that Steve ‘DJ Chris Evans’ Rogers doesn’t approach with his drippy features and his ridiculous shield - the worst boy racer’s hubcap ever.
As soon as Atwell came on the screen I regretted not going to watch the movie in 3D. That pale skin, those scarlet lips, those British woollen service uniforms from the 1940s, that limpid enunciation, the clear, calm, brainpower, the attempt to act....thank God Captain America keeps being late for her.
Maybe in some graphic novel future world her superpowers and mine (as yet latent ones) will meld in a cross-dimensional, time-flitting, globe saving clinch. (Ok there's a certain contradiction between these paragraphs and the earlier ones about Marvel's attitude to women.)
Still Atwell should be the main character. The film should be called Queen Britannia, not Captain America.
Bad acting, and a single good actress aside, Manchester is a fine Big Apple – a large slice of the film was acted out on Dale Street in the city. Even Liverpool gets in the picture with a brief dockland chase. The north west makes for a convincing Brooklyn, but that’s natural, given that New York nicked the cotton warehouse and dock building techniques of those cities to help form its own architecture.
                         Brooklyn In Manchester, Thanks To Flickr's Fly-Sycamore
As for the movie, as for Marvel, the whole Captain America collation is a odorous pile of nonsense. Captain America makes even the most pointless Bond movies of the Roger Moore era look like timeless classics.
But it does the graphic novel it came from justice.
It proves that despite what the apologists of graphic novels and manga say, such works are for people who can’t be arsed reading a proper book because it would tax their brains with bigger more complex narratives than ones which depend upon violence and special effects to chug things along. It proves that they're comics for teenagers - and they know cleverly that even the most grown-up of us like to revert back to the acne-years from time to time.
Go to Captain America for Atwell, nothing else.
Rating 1/10 
Captain America is on general release.

                                          Captain America And The Stolen Boy Racer Hubcap

CAPTAIN AMERICA ENLISTS ARMY OF BRITISH ACTORS

By: Leah Rozen Posted: Friday, July 22nd, 2011

There has been much press of late about British stars being cast as American superheroes — Henry Cavill as Superman and Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man — but it appears the real story is that it takes an English village to raise these comic book good guys to their full potential.
Take Captain America: The First Avenger, which opens today. That nobody stops for a cuppa in the middle of all the action during the new movie comes almost as a surprise considering all the Brits in the cast. American actor Chris Evans may play the patently patriotic title character, but those aiding or clashing with his superhero include Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones and Richard Armitage.
Based on the vintage Marvel Comics character, the movie is set during World War II. It’s an origin story, showing how plain old Steve Rogers, a 98-pound weakling from Brooklyn who desperately wants to join the Army, becomes brawny Captain America after he’s injected with an experimental formula that turns him into a perfect physical specimen.
The film is more enjoyable than those other recent ho-hum superhero efforts, Thor and Green Lantern, though it’s not quite as zippy as X-Men: First Class. Captain America’s appeal lies in its straightforwardness and emphasis on character. The movie makes sure that viewers fully get to know Steve Rogers before he becomes the Cap, as he’s affectionately known.

There’s earnestness to the movie that’s refreshing, as is the deft recreation of the ‘40s era. It’s only in the final third, when director Joe Johnston (The Wolfman) cranks up the familiar super-hero action, that Captain America becomes same old, same old, as our hero takes on the movie’s villain (Hugo Weaving), a rogue Nazi officer who heads up his own military.
Half the fun of Captain America, at least for Anglophenia readers, will be noting how crammed full of English talent the movie is.
Fighting alongside Captain America is Atwell, best known for her roles on British TV in the recent remake of The Prisoner, Any Human Heart and Pillars of the Earth. She plays Peggy Carter, a beautiful but crisply competent English military officer who recognizes something heroic in Steve even before his body matches his character.

The fast-rising Dominic Cooper (Mamma Mia!) offers a dapper turn as inventor and future industrialist Howard Stark (the father of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man), who is part of the elite team working on developing the super serum.
On the foe side, Captain America faces off briefly against handsome Richard Armitage (MI-5 and Strike Back), whose undercover Nazi character attempts to steal the secret serum. This bad guy leads the newly buff Chris Evans in an extended chase scene.
And Toby Jones (who played Truman Capote in Infamous and voiced Dobby the House Elf in the Harry Potter movies) offers an appealing comic performance as an unctuous scientist-inventor who’s assisting the movie’s main bad guy.
It seems that Captain America, like WWII, can only be won through an allied effort.
————————————–
Will you be seeing Captain America for one of these British stars?

RICHARD ARMITAGE

Richard Armitage attends the premiere of Captain America


"Captain America: The First Avenger" Los Angeles Premiere at the El Capitan Theater on July 19, 2011 in Hollywood, California.


Source: zimbio.com

RICHARD ARMITAGE IN CAPTAIN AMERICA - 22 JULY, 2011