Guest Actor Biography
Page 12 of 127

   

Brian Blessed

Mark Dayton, The Superlative Seven
Sergeant Hearn, The Morning After

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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Page last modified: 5 May 2017.

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