Richard Armitage's life off-screen: from private relationship to career away from acting
Richard Armitage is back on our screens in the Netflix series Missing You, which he stars in alongside Rosalind Eleazar as DCI Ellis Stagger.
The synopsis for the Netflix smash reads: "Eleven years ago Detective Kat Donovan's fiancé Josh – the love of her life – disappeared and she's never heard from him since. Now, swiping profiles on a dating app, she suddenly sees his face and her world explodes all over again. Josh's reappearance will force her to dive back into the mystery surrounding her father’s murder and uncover long-buried secrets from her past."
The 53-year-old is no stranger to our TV screens, having appeared in fellow Harlan Coben adaptation Fool Me Once, among other major shows and films such as Obsession, Hannibal, and of course, The Hobbit trilogy.
But how much do you know about his life away from the cameras?
Parents
Richard, who hails from Leicester, is the youngest son of Margaret, a school secretary, and John Armitage, a nuclear engineer.
Chatting about his childhood in a previous interview, the North & South actor praised his "amazingly supportive" parents and revealed that his mum, who passed away in 2019, worked as a secretary to fund his education at Pattison College, a performing arts school in Coventry. "Every penny of her wages went to my education," he told The Telegraph.
The actor expanded on his close relationship with family whilst chatting with Martine McCutcheon, who guest-editedHELLO!'s Christmas Digital Issue in 2021.
Explaining that he liked to spend quality time with his dad, who died in 2023, and older brother Chris over the holiday period, Richard said at the time: "I tend to give Christmas over to everybody else because I've spent so much of the year away from friends and family. So I just give it over. I go to see my brother, go to see my dad and do whatever they want to do. But it's usually the same as the year before."
While he clearly shares a close bond with his family, Richard doesn't tend to watch his shows and films with his loved ones.
When asked if his friends and family watched him star in Netflix's erotic thriller series Obsession, he told us in 2023: "I'm not going to sit down and watch it with people because I don't tend to do that anyway."
Love life
In 2020 the actor revealed he was in a "good" relationship during an interview with The Telegraph, however, he has not publicly revealed his partner's identity. Last year, ahead of his steamy show Obsession, the star joked about discussing the raunchy scenes with his boyfriend.
He told the Evening Standard: "We did talk about it. I reassured him that it was all going to be fine, and that we were being well looked after. Charlie [Murphy] and I have met each other’s partners and gone for dinner."
When asked if he would like to start a family one day, the actor said: "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."
Other ventures
A man of many talents, Richard is a published author as well as a successful actor. In 2022, the Stay Close star released his debut thriller audiobook, Geneva.
Chatting with HELLO! at the time, Richard revealed how he found the transition from acting to writing, giving an insight into his process when preparing for a role. "It's simpler than I thought because whenever I've been preparing for a role as an actor, I always do a lot of writing," he said. "I create a biography for each of my characters, which can be two pages, or sometimes it can be an entire book of notes and thoughts.
"I'm a literary researcher and I do all of that work ahead of time. It was really a question of doing that, the same work for these characters and then just continuing to explore them on the page."
Home life
While it's not known where Richard resides, he tends to spend a lot of time travelling for work.
On how he copes with the constant jetlag, he previously told HELLO!: "It's tricky, you just have to force yourself to do it but it is one of the privileges of my job. I'm not a very good tourist although I love going to work somewhere because you really get to know the place. You get to know local people, you're not taken on the tourist trail and you find little gems all around the world."
