Onscreen beefcake tells Jane Mulkerrins why he's ready to drop the tough-guy act, and why he's now more carefree about discussing his personal life

Richard Armitage is not a man who does things by halves. This month, for example, the actor is getting his hands very dirty indeed with the Forestry Commission in Dartmoor, as part of his preparations for playing Astrov, the brooding doctor and proto-environmentalist in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, which opens in the West End next month.

‘I don’t want to imagine what it’s like to plant trees, I feel like: just go and do it,’ Armitage shrugs. It’s not full-scale Method, he insists; he just finds it easier, when getting into character, to create real memories for himself, rather than having to construct fake ones. During the making of Spooks, in which he played the enigmatic MI5 agent Lucas North, he famously asked to be waterboarded.

‘Cut to me, 30 seconds into being waterboarded, going: “Get off, get off, get off.”’ He rolls his eyes. ‘What was I thinking?’ Later, when discussing his experiences on the set of Captain America, in which he played the assassin Heinz Kruger – a role that involved some ‘quite traumatic’ underwater filming – he confesses that he has a genuine fear of water. He looks sheepish. ‘Yes. I know.’