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
Kezure
for Kezure in Indiana Jones and the Monkey King
Suggested by michaelcosby
In 1937, a burned-out Indiana Jones is reluctantly drawn from academic life when zoologist Dr. Clare Clarke discovers Tyki, an impossibly ancient pygmy who speaks a lost Chinese dialect and wears a peach stone from the fabled Garden of Immortal Peaches. Believing Tyki hails from the legendary Lost City of Sun Wu Kung—the Stone Monkey King who conquered death itself—Indy assembles a ragtag team including his superstitious guide Scraggy and his obsessive student Betsy. Racing against sadistic Nazis led by the mechanical-armed Gutterbugh and a band of treacherous pirates under the bear-like Kezure, Indy navigates the deadly Zambesi River, hidden waterfalls, and booby-trapped jungles to find the golden city. There, the benevolent Monkey King rises from his skeletal tomb to resurrect the dead, and Indy must choose between claiming immortality or preserving the city’s sacred magic.
