Guest Actor Biography |
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by Pete Stampede and David K. Smith Brian Blessed, aptly described in one SF magazine as "the loudest man alive," has been contributing over-the-top performances to films and TV for nearly forty years, with a role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and providing a voice for Disney's cartoon of Tarzan, he shows no sign of slowing down. In the 60s, he made his mark in the pioneering cop show Z-Cars, as a tough if not too bright copper called Fancy Smith; later, he was the charmingly bloodthirsty King Richard IV in the first Black Adder series (but not in any of the sequels). Many guest appearances include Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Space: 1999, Survivors and The Sweeney. My abiding memory of him in the latter was that the episode ended with Blessed, playing a villain of course, starting up the getaway car, then Regan (John Thaw) pointing a gun at him through the window and shouting "Switch off! Or they'll collect yer 'ead in a pillow case!" Ah, those were the days! Born 9 October 1937 in Mexborough, Yorkshire, England, he has climbed Mount Everest, and was a consultant for the book, Into Thin Air, about the deaths of a dozen climbers on Everest in 1996. A veteran of over fifty films, he appeared, perhaps atypically, in the acclaimed BBC television adaptation of I, Claudius (1976) as the Emperor Augustus. A more typical turn was in the loudly campy film Flash Gordon (1980) along with Leon Greene and Peter Wyngarde. |
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