How old is Brian Blessed, who is the Flash Gordon star’s wife Hildegarde Neil, who does he play in Peppa Pig and has he climbed Everest?
Here's all you need to know about the incomparable thespian whose voice can move mountains (and he's climbed loads)
BRIAN Blessed is a larger-than-life actor known for his booming voice, brute physical strength and exceptional anecdotes.
The bearded thespian god is one of the last great stage performers whose off-stage persona impresses as much as his CV of roles. Here’s what we know about him…
Who is Brian Blessed, how old is he and what is his background?
Brian Blessed is an English actor, born on October 9, 1936 in Mexborough, Yorkshire, to a coal miner father who worked at Hickleton Main Colliery.
In his youth he was a keen boxer and he claimes to have sparred with the Dalai Lama.
After attending school in South Yorkshire, football aficionado Brian trained in theatre at the Bristol Old Vic and began his career in the early 1960s on television.
His first parts were in shows like Z-Cars, The Three Musketeers and The Avengers but in 1970 he finally broke into film with a role in Country Dance.
Historical roles in movies like The Trojan Women, Henry VIII And His Six Wives and Man Of La Mancha came thick and fast.
Then in 1980 he landed his best-known role – and a role that probably defined his career – as villain Prince Vultan in comic book sci-fi adventure Flash Gordon.
In addition Brian has had an extensive stage career and stunned audiences in 2015 when he collapsed during a performance of King Lear, only to return 20 minutes later.
He released his autobiography Absolute Pandemonium in the same year.
What movies and TV do I know Brian from?
Aside from Flash Gordon, Brian has brought his mercurial talent to a number of other blockbusters.
He played Lord Locksley in 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, and a wrestling trainer in Colin Farrell movie Alexander.
He also worked with Kenneth Branagh on three big screen Shakespeare adaptations, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Hamlet.
Rowan Atkinson sitcom Blackadder also featured Brian as Richard IV, and he’s had parts in Space: 1999, Doctor Who, The Sweeney, Doctors and Toast Of London.
What other work has Brian done?
Brian’s thunderclap voice – first put to good use in five Jackanory episodes in 1971 – has made him ideal casting in animated movies.
He provided two parts in Disney’s Tarzan – the voice of Clayton, as well as Tarzan’s jungle yell.
He also voiced Caous in Asterix And The Big Fight, as well as Boss Nass in Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace.
But he’s found a whole new audience of young fans thanks to his voice work on Peppa Pig, voicing Grampy Rabbit.
He has also delighted viewers of Have I Got News For You as a guest host and he’s been featured on tracks by power metal band Pythia.
Did Brian help deliver a baby and has he climbed Everest?
In 2015 Brian sensationally revealed that he’d come to a woman’s aid in London’s Richmond Park when she went into labour.
As well as biting the umbilical cord, he claimed to have licked the baby’s face during the incident in 1963.
He said: “I was covered in blood, my shirt was covered in blood, I was wrapping and wiping her saying ‘it’s all right darling,’ and I was licking the baby’s face.”
Brian never heard from the woman again and he hadn’t asked for her name.
His physical strength also helped him climb Mount Everest three times without supplemental oxygen, but he has never managed to reach the summit.
However he is the oldest man to ever reach the North Pole on foot and he has reached the tops of Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro, as well as holding a 3rd dan in Judo.
Is Brian single?
Brian has been married twice, first to US actress Ann Bomann when they were both 20, and with whom he had a daughter named Kathy, who he hasn’t spoken to since the early 1990s.
In 1978 Brian remarried, wedding actress Hildegarde Neil, and they had a daughter called Rosalind, an actress who has performed with Brian in Doctors.
Second wife Hildegarde, a keen Liverpool F.C. supporter who’s now 78, appeared with Brian on game show All Star Mr & Mrs in 2009.
She is best known for her part as Cleopatra with Charlton Heston in the 1972 Antony And Cleopatra and she also starred in 1980 crime thriller The Mirror Crack’d.
Dog lover Brian, who got an OBE in 2016, is also the the “Official Shoutsperson” of the University of York’s Douglas Adams Society.
