Briers first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines. Later, he starred as Martin in Ever Decreasing Circles and Hector in Monarch of the Glen. From the late 1980s, with Kenneth Branagh as director, he performed Shakespearean roles in Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and As You Like It.
About Richard Briers in brief
Richard David Briers, CBE, was an English actor. His fifty-year career encompassed television, stage, film and radio. Briers first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines. Later, he starred as Martin in Ever Decreasing Circles and Hector in Monarch of the Glen. From the late 1980s, with Kenneth Branagh as director, he performed Shakespearean roles in Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet and As You Like It. Briers was born in Raynes Park, Surrey, the son of Joseph Benjamin Briers and his second wife Morna Phyllis, daughter of Frederick Richardson, of the Indian Civil Service. He was the first cousin once removed of actor Terry-Thomas. He spent his childhood in a flat, Number 2 Pepys Court, behind the now demolished Rialto cinema, and later at Guildford. His father was a stockbroker, of a family of Middlesex tenant farmers; a gregarious and popular man, he contended with a nervous disposition. He drifted between jobs, spending most of his life as a bookmaker but also working as, amongst other things, an estate agent’s clerk and a factory worker for an air filter manufacturer. He met future George and Mildred actor Brian Murphy at the Dramatic Society at the Borough Polytechnic Institute, now London South Bank University, where he performed in several productions. At the age of 18, he was called up for two years national service in the RAF, during which he was a filing clerk at RAF Northwood.
When he left the RAF he studied at RADA, which he attended from 1954 to 1956. He won a scholarship with the Liverpool Repertory Company, and after 15 months moved to the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry for 6 months. He made his West End debut in the Duke of York’s Theatre 1959 production of Gilt And Gingerbread by Lionel Hale. In 1961 he was cast in the leading role in Marriage lines with Prunella Scales playing his wife. In 1970 he starred in the BBC sitcom The Good Life, playing Tom Good, a draughtsman who decides to give up his job and try his hand at being an actor. In the 1980s he played several roles, including Twelfth Night, including Ben Travers in Travers. In a subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions, in May 1972 and March 1994, he played the role of Esmond Larbey, a self-confessed Shakespearean dilettante who decides on his 40th birthday to try and give his hand to acting. He also appeared in Seven Faces of Jim with Jimmy Edwards, Jimmy Dixon of Dock Green, and the story in several episodes of Jack Ben Traver’s Hay Fever. His other early appearances included The West End’s Hay Fever and a production of Noard Green’s Hay fever in West End. He narrated Roobarb and Noah and Nelly in… SkylArk.
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This page is based on the article Richard Briers published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 25, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
