He grew up in County Durham in North East England, and first became interested in acting through Shakespeare productions at his grammar school.
Born Alan Armstrong in Annfield Plain, County Durham, his father was a coal miner and both his parents were Methodist lay preachers.
[5] Armstrong took part in the National Youth Theatre summer school in 1964, but his background and northern accent made him feel out of place.
[10] He was the villainous Egyptian cult leader Baltus Hafez in The Mummy Returns (2001),[11] and he portrayed Saint Peter with a Geordie accent in Millions (2004).
[12] He also had small roles as the High Constable in Sleepy Hollow (1999),[13] Cardinal Jinette in Van Helsing (2004),[14] Magistrate Fang in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005) and Uncle Garrow in Eragon (2006).
He played Joe Gowlan in The Stars Look Down (1974) based on the novel by A. J. Cronin and he appeared in Ken Loach's Days of Hope (1975) set in his native County Durham.
He played Wackford Squeers and Mr. Wagstaff in the eight-hour Royal Shakespeare Company stage adaptation of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby that was filmed for television in 1982.
[25][26] He has had roles in four BBC Dickens adaptations, as Daniel Peggotty in David Copperfield (1999);[27] as Inspector Bucket in Bleak House (2005);[28] as Jeremiah and Ephraim Flintwinch in Little Dorrit (2008);[29] and as Hiram Grewgious in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (2012).
He particularly remembered Dan Peggotty's houseboat on the beach, and in order to play the role he turned down an offer from Clint Eastwood, with whom he had worked on White Hunter Black Heart.
[31] In the BBC drama series Our Friends in the North (1996), he played Austin Donohue, a character based on the politician T. Dan Smith.
The character of Brian Lane is an obsessive and socially inept recovering alcoholic who has a great capacity for remembering details of old cases and colleagues.
The announcement followed comments by the cast in an interview with the Radio Times that criticised some of the series' writing,[38] and which drew an angry rebuttal from the show's writer-director Julian Simpson.
[45] In the 2014 Showtime horror series Penny Dreadful, Armstrong played Vincent Brand, an actor who gives Frankenstein's monster a job at the Grand Guignol.
[46] He guest starred in the 2014 Christmas special of Downton Abbey,[47] and took the role of Clifford Bentley in ITV police drama Prime Suspect 1973.
One of his early roles was Billy Spencer in David Storey's play The Changing Room at the Royal Court Theatre directed by Lindsay Anderson in 1971.
Thénardier and his wife, played by Susan Jane Tanner, are innkeepers whose shady practices are revealed in the song "Master of the House."
Thénardier, in Les Misérables - The Dream Cast in Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in October 1995, which was filmed and released on DVD.
[64] The New York Times review of The Father said: "At its imploding center is the superb actor Alun Armstrong... 'To eat or be eaten, that is the question,' says the captain.
[68] At the Donmar Warehouse, Armstrong appeared as Albert Einstein in Terry Johnson's Insignificance in 1995,[69] and he played Hamm in Samuel Beckett's Endgame in 1996.
The Independent review noted: "As for Alun Armstrong, we don't meet him until late in the second of three acts but he dominates the entire evening.
"[72] Armstrong took the lead role at short notice in Shelagh Stephenson's play Mappa Mundi in 2002, replacing Ian Holm who withdrew due to illness.
[75] Armstrong stars in a 2014 production of Ionesco's black comedy Exit the King at the Theatre Royal, Bath's Ustinov Studio.