Richard Briers

Richard David Briers, born on 14 January 1934 in Raynes Park, Surrey, was an English actor whose career in film, television, radio, and stage spanned five decades. He died on 17 February 2013. His mother, Morna Phyllis Briers, was a concert pianist, drama teacher, and Equity member; his father, Joseph Benjamin Briers, worked primarily as a bookmaker and was also a gifted amateur singer who attended classes at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Briers was the first cousin once removed of actor Terry-Thomas. He attended Rokeby School and later the Ridgeway School in Wimbledon, which he left at sixteen without formal qualifications.

His first employment was a clerical post with a London cable manufacturer, followed by work as a filing clerk. At eighteen he was called up for two years of national service in the Royal Air Force, serving as a filing clerk at RAF Northwood, where he met actor Brian Murphy. Murphy introduced Briers to the Dramatic Society at the Borough Polytechnic Institute, now London South Bank University. After leaving the RAF, Briers studied at RADA from 1954 to 1956, where his classmates included Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney, and where academy director John Fernald was credited by Briers with nurturing his talent. He graduated with a silver medal and won a scholarship with the Liverpool Repertory Company, subsequently spending six months at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. His West End debut came in 1959 at the Duke of York's Theatre in Gilt and Gingerbread by Lionel Hale.

Briers first gained public recognition playing George Starling in the television series Marriage Lines from 1961 to 1966, with Prunella Scales as his wife. For that role and several other television appearances, he received a British Academy Television Award for Best Actor nomination in 1966. His broader fame came through the BBC sitcom The Good Life, which ran from 1975 to 1978, in which he played Tom Good, a draughtsman who abandons his career to pursue self-sufficiency. The role was written specifically for him by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, and Felicity Kendal played his wife Barbara. Briers persuaded the producers to cast Paul Eddington in the role of Jerry, and the final episode in 1978 was performed before Queen Elizabeth II. In 1977 he received a British Academy Television Award for Best Light Entertainment Performance nomination for The Good Life and One-Upmanship. That same year he starred with Good Life co-star Penelope Keith in the televised version of Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy The Norman Conquests, and appeared in thirteen episodes of The Other One alongside Michael Gambon.

From 1984 to 1989, Briers starred as Martin Bryce in Ever Decreasing Circles. His other television credits included Goodbye, Mr Kent in 1982, All in Good Faith in 1985, the Doctor Who serial Paradise Towers in 1987, the first episode of Mr. Bean in 1990 as Mr. Sprout, If You See God, Tell Him in 1993, and an appearance in the Inspector Morse episode Death is Now My Neighbour as Sir Clixby Bream. He was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions, in May 1972 and March 1994. During the 2000s he played Hector MacDonald, the extravagant father, in the BBC programme Monarch of the Glen across series 1, 2, 3, and 7 between 2000 and 2005.

Briers devoted a substantial portion of his career to stage work, including productions of plays by Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. One of his early stage successes came in 1967, when he appeared alongside Michael Hordern and Celia Johnson in the London production of Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking. His daughter Lucy later took him to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Kenneth Branagh in Henry V, and after meeting Branagh backstage, Briers was offered the role of Malvolio in the Renaissance Theatre Company production of Twelfth Night. He went on to play title roles in King Lear and Uncle Vanya with the company. His collaboration with Branagh extended to film, with appearances in Henry V in 1989, Peter's Friends and Swan Song in 1992, Much Ado About Nothing in 1993, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1994, In the Bleak Midwinter in 1995, Hamlet in 1996, and As You Like It in 2006.

Briers made his Broadway debut in 1998 in The Chairs, a production that brought him significant recognition in the United States. His performance earned him both a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play and a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Play, both in 1998.