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
Black Bishop
for Black Bishop in Marvel Cinematic Universe: X-Men (Primary Narrative)
Suggested by andymayer
There are lots of X-Men Fancasts out there. This is intended to be a rather definitive, comic-accurate, casting of every major (and minor) character to grace the core X-Men comics. Heroes, Villians, Allies and Morlocks. Secondary/Tertiary X-Teams are on adjacent castings you can find on my profile. Roles are locked so if there are any characters that you think are missing then please suggest them in the comments. *Cast as if they were part of the MCU with the Core group experienced (and old enough) to rival the MCU Avengers. The core/veteran X-Men should be roughly "early/mid 30s-passable" so subsequent younger generational teams would make sense within the continuity. *Cast to honor/match their comic counterparts as closely as possible. Sometimes this is easier said than done so do your best. (Anything out of left field or "too creative" will be removed) *Try to avoid casting actors already playing major characters in the MCU unless make-up/costume would make them starkly different. *Try to avoid casting actors who have already played the same role in the Fox films. (The Deadpool franchise being a major exception) *If you're unfamiliar with a character, don't vote on it, please. It's as simple as that.
