Robert Aramyo is up against Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael B Jordan and Timothée Chalamet in this year’s BAFTA Best Actor category and he talks about what it feels like.
When his appointment was announced, Powe’s ringsr star was “literally doing the dishes!”
“I had it on YouTube and just couldn’t believe it when I saw my name,” he revealed. Aaramyo has also been nominated in the EE Rising Star category.
Aramyo, best known for playing Elrond in the Lord of the Rings prequel, is nominated for his role in I swear.
Set in the Galashiels of the 1980s, the film depicts the early life of Tourette Syndrome campaigner John Davidson. Because people were not informed about his condition at the time, his teachers and parents found him disruptive, while strangers thought he was saying rude things to them.
John was later helped by nurse Dottie Achenbach (played by Maxine Peake) and community center caretaker Tommy Trotter (Peter Mullan). The film has received a total of five BAFTA nominations, including Outstanding British Film and Best Original Screenplay for writer/director Kirk Jones.
The actor did not expect the film to receive so much recognition when he signed on.
“The first thing I thought of was John,” he recalls. “I just think back to those early days, and Kirk and I said, ‘How are we going to tell this story and do him justice?’ Then I kept meeting all these incredible people living with Tourette’s. I really, really care about them and their stories. And now here we are. I never expected this. It’s so beautiful.”
“It was more about settling into John’s center of gravity, about the way John moves through the world, how John holds himself – his physicality, his body – without focusing on the obvious,” he added.
