Brian Blessed is a British actor, author and adventurer. He is known for his loud, booming voice and "hearty, king-sized portrayals".

Brian Blessed is a British actor, author and adventurer. He is known for his loud, booming voice and "hearty, king-sized portrayals".

Brian trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School before beginning a distinguished and varied career, which has encompassed all forms of media. Brian is regarded as one of Britain's best-known and most highly respected actors.

Brian has taken on countless television roles including; Augustus Caesar in I Claudius (for which he received the New York Critics Award); Porthos in The Three Musketeers; the title role in The Joy Of Bach, and of course who can forget his portrayal of Richard IV in Black Adder.

On Film, Brian played Talthybius in Trojan Women, in which he was thrilled to co-star with Katherine Hepburn, Irene Papas and Vanessa Redgrave as well as many other roles.

Brian has a thriving career as a best-selling author. He has written five books; The Turquoise Mountain, The Dynamite Kid, Nothing's Impossible and Blessed Everest, an inspiring abbreviated history of Everest, which includes many magnificent photographs. His fifth book, entitled Quest To The Lost World was published in 1999.

Since the late sixties, Brian has had a great love of mountaineering and a desire to stand on "the top of the world". He has been on three expeditions to Mount Everest, the first to make the film Galahad Of Everest, a tribute to George Leigh Mallory. In 1993 he returned to Everest, this time to climb the Southern side where he reached a height of 28,000 feet, the highest a man of his age has achieved without oxygen. He returned to the Northern side in 1996 with a Channel 4 Television team as part of the Encounters series filmed the climb. Brian has also completed a trek to the North Pole resulting in him currently being the oldest man to reach the pole, and an expedition to The Lost World in Venezuela, the subject of his last book.

Brian has completed several a highly successful UK Tours with his one-man show An Evening With Brian Blessed.

Brian was honoured to be the Master of Ceremonies at the British hand-over of Hong Kong to the Chinese in June 1997, in the presence of HRH The Prince of Wales and other leading dignitaries.

As a director Brian completed his debut on film with a feature length version of King Lear in which he also played the lead. For theatre, Brian directed a regional tour of The Glass Menagerie, starring Hildegard Neil.