Homeward bound:
Alun Armstrong returns to his Geordie roots.
Playing the stepfather of Britain’s first female serial killer in
Dark Angel ticked a lot of boxes for Alun Armstrong.
The drama tells the story of Mary Ann Cotton, hanged in 1873 for the murder of her fourth husband, Frederick Cotton. But it is thought she also killed two of her other three husbands, apparently for their life insurance, and another 18 people, including 11 of her 13 children.
The story is close to home for Armstrong, who comes from County Durham, which is also the birthplace of Cotton.
And Armstrong’s dad was a miner, just like Cotton’s father, Michael Robson, who was killed in a pit accident when she was eight. Robson worked at Murton Colliery.
Armstrong plays George Stott, who became Cotton’s stepfather, and says the links to his birthplace are what drew him to the part.
“I was brought up in County Durham but I didn’t know her story. When they said there was a nursery rhyme kids used to recite it rang a bell. But that was about it.
“I thought George was a particularly interesting character. He was sympathetic and yet troubled. So it was a nice area for an actor to visit.”
And Armstrong relished the chance to play a character where he could use his native Geordie accent, something that had been an issue early in his career.
“When I started off as an actor there were hardly any Geordie parts. So I spent all of my early career hardly ever being able to do my natural accent. I was always working in other people’s accents.
Necessity is the mother of invention. You just do what you do and hope it turns out all right.”
It did turn out all right for Armstrong, whose big break came in 1971 when he discovered MGM was making a crime drama set in Newcastle, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine and Britt Ekland.
The then-25-year-old wrote to MGM and was invited to meet director Mike Hodges, who was keen to cast local actors.
Armstrong landed a small role, but it didn’t lead to overnight success. Some minor film and TV roles followed, including one in 1976 as the milkman in the movie version of The Likely Lads, a sitcom set in Newcastle. A year later he was cast in the war drama A Bridge
Too Far and since then has landed a steady stream of roles in major movies, on the stage and on TV.
But few let him use his native accent, although he appeared in
Our Friends In The North, a 1996 mini-series set in Newcastle, now recognised as one of Britain’s best TV dramas.
Armstrong has always maintained his links with the north-east of England and says filming there for Dark Angel
was great.
“I hadn’t worked there for a long time,” he says. “My two best friends are guys I went to school with.
“I’ve known them since I was 11 years old and we’re still very close.
“So I do go up and socialise with them and I’ve got a couple of cousins up there still.”
And the hard times people went through in that part of the world in less fortunate times were brought back to him recently, when he took his wife to Beamish Museum in County Durham.
“We went down the drift mine there. A young man gave us a commentary describing the kind of working conditions and showed us all of the implements they used.
“There were three or four of us who were from mining families and we were all shocked at just how tough it was. It was very moving.
“And we all said, ‘Aren’t we lucky? We’re probably the first generation able to escape that life.’
“We were born just at the right time after the Education Act, after the Second World War, and we benefited from huge social and political change in this country. We were so lucky.” In a curious twist, the museum now houses the Annfield Plain Co-op building.
“(It was) the one I went to, day in and day out, all through my childhood. Although my character wasn’t involved in the scene it was also used as the location for the general store in Dark Angel where Mary Ann buys her arsenic. It was remarkable to walk back into the Co-op after all that time.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention. You just do what you do and hope it turns out all right.” – Alun Armstrong