English actor
Father of Lucy Briers.
A first cousin, once removed, of actor Terry-Thomas.
He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1989 Queens New Year Honours List for his services to drama.
Grew up in a flat above a cinema.
He was awarded the CBE in the 2003 Queens Birthday Honours List for his services to drama.
He attended RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) between 1954-1956 and is a member of their Council.
He was nominated for Broadways 1998 Tony Award as best actor in a play for his performance of Eugne Ionesco s in "The Chairs.".
Patron of the Net Curtains Theatre Company.
His father was a bookmaker, described by Briers himself as a feckless drifter. His mother, Morna Richardson, was a pianist.
Did his national service in the RAF.
After graduating from RADA (silver medal), he won a scholarship with the Liverpool Rep (1956-57) and was henceforth never out of work.
He appeared in nine films directed by his close friend Kenneth Branagh : Henry V , Peters Friends , Swan Song , Much Ado About Nothing , Mary Shelleys Frankenstein , In the Bleak Midwinter , Hamlet , Loves Labours Lost and As You Like It .
Noted for his performances on stage in plays by Alan Ayckbourn and Shakespearean roles for Kenneth Branaghs Renaissance company.
He studied electrical engineering, but gave it up to become a file clerk, a job he continued in the RAF when he was called up to do his national service. While serving at RAF Northwood in Hertfordshire, he became involved in the drama society at Londons Borough Polytechnic Institute (now the South Bank University).
He revealed in a newspaper interview in January 2013 that he had been diagnosed with emphysema in 2007 and had smoked approximately half a million cigarettes before quitting. According to his daughter Lucy, he quit instantly in 2001 after a routine chest X-ray showed that if he didnt, he would soon be in a wheelchair.
Along with Jimmy Yuill , he is one of only two actors other than Kenneth Branagh himself to appear in all five Shakespearean films that Branagh has directed: Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet , Loves Labours Lost and As You Like It .
I was trained as an actor and was taught voice projection and diction,but the fashion nowadays is to speak badly and make terrible noises,from the back of your throat.
I am irrevocably and unashamedly old-fashioned. I subscribe to The Oldie,magazine - written expressly for the grumpy elderly - and I relish a,good whinge.
I make no apologies that my home - in which my wife, Ann, and I have,lived for 42 years and raised our two children - is a shrine to a,slower-paced era, when household goods were made to last and no one,with a scintilla of common sense threw anything away if it still,worked.
We have, for the past 50-odd years, always found this to be a perfectly,satisfactory arrangement.
