Age: 89
male
Brian Blessed OBE (born 9 October 1936) is an English actor. He is known for his distinctive bushy beard, booming voice, and exuberant personality and performances. He portrayed PC "Fancy" Smith in Z-Cars; Augustus in the 1976 BBC television production of I, Claudius; King Richard IV in the first series of Blackadder; Prince Vultan in Flash Gordon; Bustopher Jones and Old Deuteronomy in the 1981 original London production of Cats at the New London Theatre; Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, in Henry V; Boss Nass in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace; and the voice of Clayton and the Tarzan yell in Disney's Tarzan. In 2016, Blessed was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the arts and charity. Blessed was born on 9 October 1936 at Montagu Hospital in Mexborough, West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of William Blessed, a socialist coal miner at Hickleton Main Colliery (and himself the son of a coal miner) and cricketer for the Yorkshire second team, and Hilda (née Wall). He had a brother Alan, seven years younger, and the pair "went everywhere together" when they were growing up. Alan Blessed died from leukaemia aged 52; their mother died aged 87, and their father died aged 99. Blessed's great-great-grandfather, Jabez Blessed, was the father of 13 children and worked as a china and glass dealer in Brigg, Lincolnshire; many of Blessed's relatives hail from Brigg. Blessed went to Bolton on Dearne Secondary Modern School, and completed his national service in the RAF, in Bicester, before enrolling at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 1956.
Brian Blessed
Stoker in Ashbury
for Stoker in Ashbury in Black Mirror
Suggested by dcernoch
The young nobleman Samuel Gordon left the Black Mirror estate in England 12 years ago after his wife Catherine died in a fire. In 1981, however, he returned to the estate because of the death of his grandfather William. Grandmother Victoria and Detective Collier believe it is suicide. But Samuel doesn't believe it and he's looking for his grandfather's murderer on his own. The story reveals a ghostly element of the Gordon curse, which affects only the male descendants of the Gordon family. The perpetrator of this curse is the ancient ancestor Mordred, the younger of the Gordon brothers, the founders of the estate. Another suspicious deaths occur during Samuel's search. Samuel's search for the curse, using the "keys of the souls" takes him to the nearby village of Willowcreek, Warmhill Parish, Dr. Hermann's autopsy room, the mansion, the Ashburry Sanatorium, and more.
