The role Robert Aramayo called a childhood dream come true: “I feel very lucky”
While it wasn’t the biggest talking point of the Baftas for obvious reasons, the fact remains that a lot more people know who Robert Aramayo is today than this time last month, or even last week.
By winning the ‘Best Actor’ gong, he didn’t only defeat a star-studded field that also included Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jesse Plemons, Ethan Hawke, and Michael B Jordan; he accomplished something that nobody else has managed for over 25 years.
Aramayo became the first person to win the ‘Best Actor’ prize without even being nominated in the same category at the Academy Awards since 2000, when Billy Eliot’s Jamie Bell emerged victorious, which also makes him just the third actor in 16 years who won’t claim a Bafta and an Oscar in the same year.
Needless to say, it’s the biggest moment of his career by far, and even though Aramayo has become an increasingly familiar face to audiences in the United Kingdom for his work in film and television, as well as major productions with a global fanbase like Game of Thrones, his visibility is higher than it’s ever been.
Most performers in his position will fancy their chances of cracking America, and whether he does or not, one thing he won’t be able to do is play his childhood dream role, since he’s already done it.
Nobody really asked for it, needed it, or can do a particularly great job of justifying its existence, but Aramayo won’t care, because he’s living the dream by playing Elrond in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
“I feel very honoured to be playing him, just to be here and talking about him,” he said when the first season premiered in 2022. “To get the opportunity to play him was a childhood dream, so I just feel very lucky to be playing him.” It’s no Peter Jackson trilogy, but fair play to the lad, he ticked a big one off the bucket list.
“Middle-earth gives you the opportunity to explore so many different characters, so many different creatures who all behave in different ways, and communicate in different ways,” he added. “It’s an exciting part of the show.” It’s also the most expensive TV series in history, and by stepping into the shoes of a character previously played by Hugo Weaving in Jackson’s seminal trio, there was plenty of pressure.
With a third season of The Rings of Power having wrapped filming, presumably with an eye on a late 2026 or early 2027 release date, Aramayo will continue to live out his childhood dreams for at least eight more episodes, even if it’s hard to look much further ahead than that when streamers have developed a habit of axing their biggest originals without warning.
