Brian Blessed

Brian Blessed OBE
Blessed at the SFX Weekender 3 in 2012
Born	(1936-10-09) 9 October 1936 (age 80) Mexborough, Yorkshire, England
Residence	Windlesham, England
Occupation	Actor, television presenter, writer
Years active	1962–present
Spouse(s)	Ann Bomann (divorced) Hildegarde Neil (m. 1978)
Children	2

Brian Blessed OBE (/ˈblɛsɪd/; born 9 October 1936) is an English actor famous for work on the stage, television, radio and in films.

Blessed was born on 9 October 1936 in Mexborough, Yorkshire, the son of William Blessed (1906–2005), a socialist coal miner at Hickleton Main Colliery (and himself the son of a coal miner), and Hilda Wall (1909–1997). Blessed was born at Montagu Hospital in Mexborough, Yorkshire. His great-great-grandfather Jabez Blessed, the father of 13 children, found work as a china and glass dealer in Brigg, Lincolnshire, and many of Blessed's relatives hail from there.

Blessed went to Bolton on Dearne Secondary Modern School and started drama training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

One of Blessed's earliest roles was that of PC "Fancy" Smith in the BBC television series Z-Cars, between 1962 and 1965. In 1966, he appeared in a production of Incident at Vichy at the Phoenix Theatre in London. In 1967, he played Porthos in a 10-part BBC adaptation of The Three Musketeers. Blessed also had minor roles in cult TV series such as The Avengers (1967, 1969) and the original Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969). He appeared as William Woodcock in the Yorkshire Television series Boy Dominic (1974). He played Caesar Augustus in the BBC Two drama series I, Claudius (1976) and Basileos in The Aphrodite Inheritance (1979). He hosted a docudrama on the life of Johann Sebastian Bach called The Joy of Bach (1978), in which he also played Bach in a number of scenes.