Brian Blessed

A Blessed Bottom: how booming Brian inspired his daughter’s Shakespearean role

Rosalind Blessed explains how her force-of-nature father shaped her performance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Rosalind Blessed

14, Jun, 2022 @6:18 AM

Brian Blessed: ‘I’m only noisy when I choose to be’

The quiet and restrained actor, 84, tells Rich Pelley about exploring like Grampy Rabbit in Peppa Pig, not appearing as Dr Who and firing his bow and arrow at V-2 rockets

Rich Pelley

13, Feb, 2021 @2:00 PM

How we made Flash Gordon – by Brian Blessed and Mike Hodges

‘I told them if they offered the part of Vultan to anyone else, I’d strangle the bastard’

Interviews by Rich Pelley

17, Aug, 2020 @1:55 PM

Brian Blessed: Flash Gordon is the Queen's favourite film

The star of camp sci-fi classic claims the monarch told him she watches it with her grandchildren every Christmas, and asked the actor to recite dialogue

Catherine Shoard

10, Aug, 2020 @10:42 AM

Flash Gordon review – bizarre expressionist superhero panto

With echoes of The Wizard of Oz and Carry On movies, Mike Hodges’ vintage intergalactic fable delivers mayhem, madness and eye-frazzling colour

Peter Bradshaw

31, Jul, 2020 @10:00 AM

'He's so strapping and virile': Patrick Stewart at 80 – by Shatner, McKellen, Tennant and more

Horse rides in stockings, rehearsals in deep freezes, fights in string vests ... as Patrick Stewart hits 80, friends from Harriet Walter to Brian Blessed pay tribute to the great actor

Interviews by Chris Wiegand, Catherine Shoard and Toby Moses

09, Jul, 2020 @5:00 AM

Brian Blessed: 'All my life, 90% of men have bored the arse off me'

Dressed in pyjamas and wellies, the great actor talks about his astronaut training in Russia, the original Cats – and putting his might behind his daughter Rosalind’s very personal plays

Mark Lawson

13, Jan, 2020 @3:09 PM

The strife of Brian: is it unchristian to use the f-word?

Actor Brian Blessed dropped the f-bomb after tripping during a charity church service. Was this just a faux pas – or a genuine sin?

Leo Benedictus

09, Dec, 2019 @3:28 PM

Readers recommend playlist: songs about Yorkshire

Your weekly playlist of tunes on a theme picked by readers. Agree with their choices?

treefrogdemon

31, Mar, 2016 @11:00 AM

The best celebrity memoirs of 2015

From Tom Jones to the green grass of Old Trafford, via Sue Perkins’s diaristic mash-up and Steve Coogan’s entertaining confessional

Viv Groskop

06, Dec, 2015 @10:00 AM

A bird in the hand: the boy who threw away a Picasso

Actor Brian Blessed’s story of rejecting a drawing by Picasso is fascinating but odd: how could anyone not recognise a dove by the greatest artist since Raphael?

Jonathan Jones

09, Nov, 2015 @5:56 PM

Oxford’s random interview questions are a much-needed curveball leveller | Catherine Shoard

The unpredictable university admissions process tests not recall but interpretation – the key skill in an age of randomness