Richard Armitage was bullied for being gay: ‘You’re unlearning that for the rest of your life’

Fool Me Once star Richard Armitage has spoken candidly about the “physical, violent and verbal” bullying he suffered at school because of his sexuality. 

Despite coming out to his family aged 19, the actor only revealed publicly last year that he is gay.

Now, just a week before he turns 53, Armitage has detailed his experience of homophobic bullying as part of the plot for his new fiction thriller novel The Cut, in which lead character is accosted by a gang of older schoolboys.

Speaking to The Times, the Olivier-Award-nominated actor said he faced vicious bullying for approximately 10 years as a child, starting at primary school.

Asked whether he believed the bullying was a result of the playground thugs knowing that he was gay, Armitage replied: “They probably knew before I did, which I think is quite sad.

“I do remember having a conversation with my mum: ‘Mum, they’re saying this word about me’. And she said, ‘Oh, that’s not you. You’re a big strong boy. That’s not who you are’.

“Part of wanting to brush [my sexuality] under the carpet was because [what] my mum had told me. I wanted to believe her. I didn’t want to let her down.

“This was pre-puberty, and you grow into yourself and you become more comfortable with yourself but it’s weird to learn something that’s so essential to your life from other people in a very negative way. That takes a lot of undoing.”

In one incident Armitage, who had an uncredited part in Stars Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, but shot to international fame in The Hobbit trilogy, was left with a bloody nose after being punched in the face. For years, he dreaded having go to school every morning.

“The worst part of it is you learn really early in your life that you’re worth less than the sh*t on somebody’s shoe because someone told you that,” he said. “And you are unlearning that throughout the rest of your life, it’s an ongoing process.”

Having begun his acting career in the early 90s, Armitage – seen most recently in ITV drama Red Eye – has witnessed some of the industry’s worst behaviour. And although much of the trauma related to his childhood bullying is a “distant echo”, it comes to the surface when he sees “bullying or gaslighting” at work.

“That’s when that distant bell rings and I am 14 years old again and my face grows hot at the injustice. Kids can be very cruel but perhaps they don’t know any better. When we behave like this as adults, I find it very hard to reconcile,” he said.

Who is Richard Armitage’s partner?

When Armitage spoke publicly about his sexuality for the first time, he also revealed that he is in a relationship.

Speaking about his role as William Farrow in last year’s erotic thriller Obsession, he shared that he had a conversation with his partner about the show’s sex scenes.

“We did talk about it. I reassured him that it was all going to be fine, and we were being well looked after,” he recalled. He and co-star Charlie Murphy, who played his on-screen lover Anna Barton, had “met each other’s partners and gone for dinner.”

Armitage admitted that he “fell in love” with her while the Netflix series was being shot. “I really felt something physical for her, to the point where in one of the final scenes we shot, when she said goodbye I genuinely was heart-broken.”

However, he confirmed that he is still with his long-term male partner, who is “not a public person”, and that he wouldn’t be naming him publicly.

The Cut is available on audiobook on Thursday (22 August).

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