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Richard Armitage has revealed that there have been so many headlines talking about his potential future as a James Bond actor that even his family members are confused.

“My nephew still asks if I’m going to be James Bond, and I say ‘No. You just read it in a paper’,” the 52-year-old clarified.

Speaking in a new interview with the Radio Times, he admitted: “Every three weeks there’s a newspaper story about that.

“It’s an amazing role, but I’m probably more likely to be tempted towards playing the villain.”

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings actor has even won online polls asking the public to pick their favourite fantasy Bond character, but he has other projects he’s engrossed in for now.

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The former dwarf king in The Hobbit trilogy has just penned a new crime thriller due for publication this week, titled Geneva – and he can’t wait to see it on shelves.

Revealing with relish that he likes being referred to as an author, he explained the plot is centred around a Nobel Prize-winning scientist based in the Swiss capital.

“She’s drawn into a crime of which she is the victim but doesn’t realise it,” the actor disclosed.

As a narrator for Audible, Richard had been keen to take his writing career to the next step and turned down the opportunity of a ghostwriter when it was offered to him.

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“I insisted that if I was going to speak the words [reading, inevitably, the audiobook] they were going to be my words, every single one of them,” he explained.

“I got to play director, I got to play all the characters, I got to play the architect of the world I was building; and, actually, it could have been a huge failure.”

However, Richard added that his time in the acting industry gave him valuable insight and transferrable skills when it came to becoming a novellist for the first time.

He added that the intensive training he completed at drama school has sometimes bordered on “psychology”.

There’s no doubt that the book’s plot is hugely psychological, covering gaslighting, dementia and the agony of another person trying to “steal someone’s life”.

Elsewhere in the interview, Richard revealed that in the past, he has received numerous scripts to peruse that high-profile peers have turned down.

I would get scripts with Jude Law’s name on them, or Eric Bana’s… I usually just think, ‘Oh well, if Jude doesn’t want that role, I’ll do it.’

“I’m a ‘yes’ man: I love going to work so I don’t say no to very much.”

The full interview runs in this week’s Radio Times magazine, which also features Helen Mirren on the cover and is out now.

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