Richard Armitage's Talk Hobbit With MTV

As part of their 2012 Ones to Watch series, MTV spoke with The Hobbit's Ricard Armitage as he spoke about working on The Hobbit and his role of Thorin. Filming is currently on break but the third block will start at the end of January until July with possibility another block in 2012. Below are the highlights (with spoilers if not read the book) with the full Q&A here.

MTV: Is it easy to forget you're acting? Do you get lost in the world the production creates?
Armitage: The soundstages they made in Wellington, [New Zealand], most of the time it doesn't feel like we've been working on a set. Even when there's a green screen there, Peter's vision of it is so clear and his description of it is so clear. The pre-production CGI that they've already created really fires up your imagination. That was the shoot we started with. On location, it's just theirs to program these amazing images into your head, so we can now take them back into the studio.

MTV: Will it be hard to leave behind once you've wrapped?
Armitage: It don't think it will be possible to leave it behind me. I think this is one of those characters that always stay with you because you spend so much time with him and it's such a transformation. I'm in the character every day, and I've become so familiar with him. I sort of know how he thinks. I feel really close to the character, and he will continue beyond this job , [spoiler ahead] even though, he dies at the end of the movie. I think he is a fascinating character. I will probably wake up in six years' time and be inspired to think about him again. It's really exciting.

MTV: You ended up with middle ground in terms of the amount of makeup. Did you feel lucky?
Armitage: It did evolve. We all started with quite an extreme version of ourselves. I think because my character does spend a lot of time onscreen and you really have to understand what he's going through emotionally, it became clear that if we started make the prosthetic as close to my features as possible but still make him a dwarf, it would be much easier to read the character. He has to go on such a journey, it was really important to do that. I grew my own beard after the first block because I felt that it was restricting my face. The jaw is so connected to emotion that I wanted to have that free. It made such a huge difference.

It's really weird now because I can't play the character when I haven't gotten everything on. It's very hard to rehearse when you're not in costume, when you haven't gotten the prosthetics on, but I look in the mirror when it's all finished and I don't see it. I can't see where it starts and where it ends. I just see the character. I've never had that before. It's such a unique experience. It's a face that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to WETA workshop and the people that created it.

(via The One Ring)