Brian Blessed

Brian Blessed is one of Britain's best-loved character actors. He first came to prominence as one of the original regular cast of Z Cars in which he played P.C. William 'Fancy' Smith, and went on to appear as Porthos in the BBC's 1966 adaptation of The Three Musketeers. Working mainly in television throughout the 60s and 70s, Blessed starred as Mark of Cornwall in Arthur Of The Britons, William Woodcock in Boy Dominic, Jack Treadful in Nobody's House and Augustus Caesar in I, Claudius, and made numerous guest appearances in series such as The Avengers (twice), Survivors, Blakes 7, The Sweeney, Minder, Hadleigh, Public Eye, Justice, Churchill's People and Roald Dahl's Tales Of The Unexpected. He later appeared as King Richard IV in The Black Adder, Long John Silver in John Silver's Return To Treasure Island, General Yevlenko in War And Remembrance, Basileos in The Aphrodite Inheritance, Spiro in My Family And Other Animals and made a notable guest appearance in the Doctor Who story Mindwarp. Blessed's film roles include Pedro in Man Of La Mancha (1972), Suleiman Khan in High Road To China (1983), Exeter in Henry V (1989), Lord Locksley in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991) and Edward The Confessor in Macbeth (1997), but his own favorite film role was that of Prince Vultan, leader of the Hawkmen, in Flash Gordon (1980). He made a second guest appearance in Space:1999, as Maya's father Mentor in The Metamorph, and between the two he starred as Tom Bowen in Gerry Anderson's The Day After Tomorrow pilot film. He appeared as Squire Western in the BBC production of Tom Jones, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Meneace film and a BBC adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Blessed is married to actress Hildegard Neil, seen as Elizia in Devil's Planet.

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