Actors - Brian Blessed

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Brian Blessed

	Actors - Brian Blessed

Brian Blessed (born October 9, 1937) is an English actor. He is a large, charismatic man with a booming voice and robust build who often plays powerful men in Shakespearian and medieval dramas. The son of a miner, he was born in the ex-mining town of Mexborough and grew up in the nearby town of Goldthorpe South Yorkshire. He has been criticised for what his critics see as his use of shouting as an all-purpose characterization technique and was described by one magazine as "the loudest man alive", but this assessment disregards his greater skills, which have earned him a reputation as a great British actor and cult figure. Offstage he is said to be quite shy.

Blessed is also an adventurer. On three occasions, he has tried to climb Mount Everest (though he never reached the summit), and climbed higher than any other man of his age (56 years at the time; his height record was broken by Yuichiro Miura, aged 70, in 2003) during one attempt in 1993. He was on the mountain on May 10, 1996, when 12 climbers were killed in a sudden late-afternoon blizzard, though Blessed was safe at his base camp that day. He has successfully climbed Aconcagua in Argentina as well as Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Blessed currently lives in Surrey. He is married to Hildegarde Neil and has a daughter, Rosalind Blessed, who is an actress.

Blessed is generally regarded as a hero of Shakespeare, as well as an immensely entertaining and often satirised comic figure, mainly due to his instantly recognisable voice.

Selected roles

1967 - The Avengers
- Mark Dayton
1968 - The Avengers - Sergeant Hearn
1972 - Arthur of the Britons - Mark of Cornwall
1976 - I, Claudius - Caesar Augustus
1976 - Maya's Father - Space: 1999

1977 - Survivors - Brod in the episode Law of the Jungle

1978 - Blake's 7 - Vargas in the episode Cygnus Alpha

1980 - Flash Gordon
- Prince Vultan

1980 - The Joy of Bach (TV) - J.S. Bach/Himself

1983 - Blackadder
- Richard IV

1986 - Doctor Who - King Yrcanos in the serial The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp

1989 - Henry V
- Exeter

1991 - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
- Lord Locksley

1991 - Galahad of Everest - George Mallory

1993 - Much Ado About Nothing
- Signor Antonio

1994 - MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis - Atticus

1999 - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace - Boss Nass, leader of the Gungans (voice)

1999 - Tarzan - Clayton (voice)

2004 - Alexander - Leonidas

2005 - Weebl and Bob'' documentary - Narrator

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Brian Blessed ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Brian Blessed; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay