He was born around the time I graduated from high school. He’s only had a 30-odd screen appearances at all — but a bunch have been frock flicks, and he has that pouty emo boy thing I dig. Thus, here we are with a Man Candy Monday about Welsh-born Aneurin Barnard. Enjoy!
Guy the Squire in Ironclad (2011)
Getting medieval on yo’ ass.
But still kinda emo in the 13th century.
David Bailey in We’ll Take Manhattan (2012)
With Karen Gillan as 1960s supermodel Jean Shrimpton.
Darnley in Mary Queen of Scots (2013)
The first of his ‘historical douchebag’ roles. Cute, but Darnley is still a d-bag in this French take on MQoS’ life.
Richard Duke of Gloucester / King Richard III in The White Queen (2013)
Is this PFG TV adaption crap? Yup. Is Aneurin Barnard yummy here? Also yup.
Let me tousle that hair!
John Trenchard in Moonfleet (2013)
It’s like you plucked a picture out from the pile of Cliche Guys Trystan Has Dated right here.
Bobby Willis in Cilla (2014)
Whoa! I did not recognize him in this miniseries about Cilla Black, an English pop performer in the 1960s.
Captain George Bisset in The Scandalous Lady W (2015)
And here’s where Kendra starts calling him “Frodo” because his hair doesn’t work for the period of flicks he’s in and the stylists can figure out what to do with curly hair or don’t just give him a good wig. I don’t blame him though, he’s still adorable IMNSHO.
Boris Drubetskoy in War & Peace (2016)
That candlestick!
But another of his kind of douchy historical characters. Hey, someone has to play ’em!
Mykola in Bitter Harvest (2017)
Set in 1930s Ukraine, this movie is about peasanty lovers being crushed by Stalin’s regime. I’m guessing from the pic that Barnard is on Stalin’s side? So then, another historical baddie.
Mozart in Interlude in Prague (2017)
A highly fictionalized story set during Mozart’s short time in Prague.
I’ll be in my bunk.
Gibson in Dunkirk (2017)
Obligatory boring war film, but highly tousle-able hair.
Steerforth in The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019)
A fabulous rake who takes David under his wing. GREAT hats!
He has a baby Rufus Sewell thing going on here, & I like it.
Paul Langevin in Radioactive (2019)
Playing a younger scientist who Marie Curie has an affair with after Pierre Curie dies. Cute & smart!
Hamish Goames in Barkskins (2020)
Everything about this series sounds DIRE, but I still love his look. Very Wayne Hussey from The Mission (’80s goths know what I’m talking about).
Upcoming:
1899 (2022)
Per IMDB: “Multinational immigrants traveling from the old continent to the new encounter a nightmarish riddle aboard a second ship adrift on the open sea.” Not stated what role Aneurin Barnard plays in this Netflix TV series.
What’s your favorite frock flick role featuring Aneurin Barnard? Or are you a meanie like Kendra, who just thinks he looks like Frodo?
Loved him as Richard III and then proceeded to watch everything I could find him in.
Ahem!
Using the phrase “[nationality]-born” about a person clearly implies that they have adopted another nationality, or at least the outlook and outward appearance of another nationality. You can say that Cary Grant was English-born, and that Arnie Schwarzenegger was Austrian-born; but Aneurin Barnard isn’t “Welsh-born”: he’s Welsh.Very much so. He gives interviews in Welsh, and tweets about the history of the language; he has named Richard Burton, another Welshman, as his acting hero.
Wow, that’s a weirdly pedantic thing to get hung up on. “Welsh-born” does mean he was born in Wales & also does not exclude any other meaning.
Maybe it’s a transatlantic difference in usage. I can assure you that over here it does, and that if you described any proud Welsh person – which AB certainly is – as ‘Welsh-born’ that would cause major offence. It would be understood to imply ‘but of course you’ve left all of that behind you”.
I can definitely see how that would be extra frustrating in the wake of good ol’ British colonialism and suppression of culture :/
Edit: Sorry that should probably be English, not British, hey.
The very name “Aneurin” tells you a great deal about his origins and his parents’ politics!
Was definitely getting the Rufus Sewell vibe the first time I saw him. Yum!
Me, too! Am not sure A.B. will ascend to Sewellian heights, but he’s got potential.
Ahhh, it’s not just me then!
HE’S FRODO
FRODO IS NOT A SEXUAL BEING
I wager Sam would disagree.
(sorry…)
I am here to say he is the love child of Rufus Sewell and Elijah Wood. FACT.
I first saw in in Maria Mundi and The “can’t remember name” Box. His hair was riotously sticky-uppy. It wasn’t a good film, but it had all my lovely Welsh boys in it.
Oh, for pity’s sake. I first saw HIM in… Tyrannosaurus arms and short splodgy fingers. But at least I got the good teeth genes.
Feeling all cougar-y over here . . .
You and me BOTH sister Frances!
I do not like all war films but Dunkirk was really good. Now I need to watch it again, along with more of his films.
Probably best casting to date for Richard III, in terms of age-group and resemblance.
Pity it was for a crappy Philippa Gregory adaptation…
Incidentally, a lot of ‘David Copperfield’ was filmed near my flat (some literally just around the corner). They’ve been filming ‘Enola Holmes’ here, too, just last week.
I was amused that the Battle of Bosworth was shot in the snowy woods. It happened on open fields on August 22. So much wrong. But he was perfect as Richard.
You might enjoy this rant on the subject:
I’ve always said there’s 2-3 streets in the UK where every period flick is filmed bec. they look generically 18th- to 19th-century enough. You must live near one :D
Let’s see–Lacock, Wiltshire (great for Austen); parts of Lambeth in London–strip away the signs and cars and you have a late-Victorian working-class road. Where else?
Chatham Dockyard, where other scenes of Enola Holmes are being filmed, and loads of other things from Call the Midwife to His Dark Materials.
The interior of Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden for the 19th and early 20th century, but also wackier stuff such as The Death of Stalin (Beria dies in the Gents) and The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy.
In France, the absolute go-to location for any historic urban scene is the Cité Plantagenet (the medieval centre) of Le Mans. If you have watched any French historicals at all you’ve almost certainly seen something of Le Mans. The Depardieu Cyrano; Le Bossu (I think that was called ‘On Guard’ in the US?); The Man in the Iron Mask; Que la Fete Commence; etc. . .
The Black Country Living Museum, Dudley does Working Class Old very well. The Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick, despite being Tudor was in the Wet Shirt P&P as well as Doctor Who, and in quite a lot of other things. Durham Cathedral starred in Elizabeth as a Tudor palace – only four centuries wrong, but hey…
Bits of York, Richmond (the Yorkshire variety) and Stamford keep resurging too. I believe Poldark’s Truro was actually Dublin, though.
Thank you! I’m glad I’m not the only person who thought that Dunkirk was boring; my friends were all raving about it. :)
I somehow watched Dunkirk twice — once on a plane, once in a hotel, both times bec. I was bored & thought ‘how bad can this be? it has tons of actors I like in it!’ — & I came out of it even MORE bored.
I thought it needed a good fight on the beach with Amazons – like in Wonder Woman. :)
I saw the French film Week-end à Zuydcoote ( Weekend at Dunkirk ) (1964) after I saw Nolan’s effort and found it the far superior film. With Nolan’s film, I can hardly remember a single soldier, and was way more worried about getting tinnitus from the sound effects in theater than the protagonists’ survival. I get the approach; I just don’t think it was effective.
Week-end à Zuydcoote succeeded on a completely different level; by following one character on an Odyssey-like journey through Dunkirk, you quickly become far more invested. You care when characters are killed unceremoniously.
It also boasts amazing production values; it stands up very well to its modern counterpart. So it you want to see a movie about the subject that captures the scale but also works as a character piece, I highly recommend it.
He’s a curious case of someone whom I like as an actor, even if I don’t like much of what I’ve seen him in.
Lindybeige’s criticisms of Ironclad are 100x more entertaining than the film itself.
I tried, as best I could, to watch The White Queen . Toothless, bland, low effort on production values, daytime soap version of history. Aneurin Barnard was one of the better cast roles, granted. But for my money, it doesn’t get better than the Battle of Bosworth Field being 10 versus 10 completely separated men doing somersaults in a forest. Now that’s cinema done right, folks!
Same. I don’t love most of these productions but I could watch him all day.
I found TWQ endearing, even if only in a so-bad-it’s good way. It remains one of my favourite despite its paucity of objective strengths, and somehow more memorable than many technically-superior productions. It’s kind of the medieval version of Star Trek: Voyager.
I also find it interesting that this series, relatively obscure in the TV world, continues to have a cult following many years afterwards among the makers of musical montages.
I’ve read that description of Bosworth a dozen times now, and it gets funnier with each reading. Thank you!
Couldn’t agree more about the stupid incompetent mess that was Ironclad, and Lindybeige’s entertaining dissection thereof.
Also the lack of effort that went into the production values of The White Queen. When it aired, that still of Rebecca Ferguson on her coronation throne appeared in every puff piece, news item and review of it:
http://www.armchairanglophile.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Rebecca-Ferguson-in-THE-WHITE-QUEEN-600×400.jpg
It cracked me up every time I saw it, because the shorter of her two ‘sceptres’ is quite clearly a modern British field marshal’s baton with the figure of St George and the Dragon just roughly snapped off.. Anyone who had ever seen one of those could identify it straight away:
https://collection.nam.ac.uk/images/960/157000-157999/157034.jpg
They just left a broken bit of the base of the figure on the baton: they couldn’t even be bothered to file it down!
I may have been the only person in the world to both watch all of ‘Barkskins’ and hope that it was given a second season, because the show was damned hilarious.
For example, there’s a scene near the end of the season where all three characters, including Barnard’s, have a line of dialogue about eating beans, and then someone is murdered.
I know, I know, I know it’s not a Frock Flick, but do yourselves a favor and watch Hunky Dory with about a 70’s Welsh High School glee club putting on a Rock Musical consisting of glam rock hits with an utterly incandescent Minne Driver in a role that should have won her much more acclaim. Aneurin sings beautifully.
That sounds great!
It’s wonderful.
Very cute.
Oh dear…he’s not bad-looking at all, but I first noticed him in Interlude in Prague which also starred James Purefoy. So, I really only had eyes for James, and I thought this guy looked like a baby in comparison. That said, Interlude in Prague is OK. He was good as a young, lovestruck Motzart. Ironclad–which also stars James Purefoy–is also OK.
But anyway, yes, he’s attractive. And he does have great hair! That said, I think he’s the yummiest in the short hair pics, especially from Radioactive and War and Peace. He definitely has a “period” look, so I think we can look forward to seeing him in many more Frock Flicks throughout his career.
Thanks for the Interlude in Prague tip. Huge Wolfie fangirl so I had to watch. Found it very reminiscent to Amadeus in places. Better costumes. So so story.
Ahhhh Richard! my own, my love! also he was in the Marple adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Endless Night”. Lovely in that. he’s a special favorite of mine, I’d love to see him as Dr. Seward in an accurate version of Dracula
I thought he was great in the Cilla Black series, which is the only thing I’ve ever seen him in. But he really made something out of what could have been a pretty nothingy part.
Argh, I was thinking, Oh he’s stepping into Rufus Sewell’s lane now the great Rufester is getting on a bit, and I see you pinged it already!!
I watched him in an episode of Marple just last week and thought, “who dat? Him pretty!”
Now that’s a surprise LOL as someone who accompanied you girls through the War and Peace (2016) journey never expected “Frodo” to get a MCM