Name | Richard O'Brien |
---|---|
Caption | O'Brien in 2006. |
Birth name | Richard Timothy Smith |
Birth date | March 25, 1942 |
Birth place | |
Occupation | |
Nationality | British |
Ethnicity | White British |
Citizenship | UK |
Period | 1965-present |
Genre | Cult film |
Notableworks | The Rocky Horror Show (Writer)''The Crystal Maze (Presenter) |
Spouse | Kimi Wong (1971–?, divorced)Jane Moss (1983–2006, divorced) |
Children | 3 |
Website | http://www.rockyhorror.com |
He became the presenter of UK Channel 4's popular game show The Crystal Maze in 1990, specialising in sardonic put-downs, occasional eccentricities and playing his harmonica at random intervals. The show's heyday was around 1991–1993. It was regularly Channel 4's highest watched programme, mainly seen by children and young adults (particularly university students who made it into a cult show), reaching a peak of 7 million viewers for the 1993 Christmas special. The extent of both the shows and to a large extent O'Brien's success is shown by the fact that The Crystal Maze was named 'Greatest UK Game Show of All Time' in a 2006 poll by the UKGameshows.com website. Richard left The Crystal Maze in 1993 after the fourth series; the show was then taken over by Edward Tudor-Pole. It never achieved the same degree of success under Tudor-Pole, and was discontinued within two years.
In other roles O'Brien has conceptualized and played the role of the Child Catcher in the West End theatre production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He also occasionally does cabaret-style music and comedy performances on stages around the world, singing songs from Rocky Horror among others. In 1995, he performed a select number of shows as the devilish charmer, Mephistopheles Smith, in a musical/comedy show he wrote entitled Disgracefully Yours, which was later given permission to be adapted into a musical, performed first by Eubank Productions for the Kansas City Fringe Fest in 2006, and more recently by Janus Theatre Company for the Edinburgh Fringe 2007, simply entitled Mephistopheles Smith. In late 2005, he appeared (as the spirit of the mirror) in the pantomime version of Snow White, which played at the Milton Keynes Theatre. In the summer of 2006 he played the Child Catcher in the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations at Buckingham Palace.
Richard O'Brien performed in Thank-You for the Music, a 90-minute ABBA documentary for ITV, directed by Martin Koch, who previously directed the musical Mamma Mia! The documentary included a remake of the mini musical The Girl with the Golden Hair which ABBA performed during their 1977 world tour and which was featured on The Album. The musical was be performed at the Prince of Wales Theatre and featured Richard O'Brien, Liz McClarnon, and the Dynamos.
He is also a patron of the Five Stars Scanner Appeal, which benefits the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, UK. From 2001 until 2006 he hosted the annual Transfandango, gala gathering of "Dearhearts and Trans 'n' Gentle People" to raise money for the hospital. This has now been superseded by 'Richard O'Brien's Halloween Party'.
A script for another rumored sequel entitled Revenge of the Old Queen, has been circulated on the web and reproduced on various fansites, though officially denied as O'Brien's work by his representatives. While he has worked on a screenplay by that title, it was never publicly released. He has been working again on The Stripper (based on the book by Carter Brown), a musical for which he wrote the lyrics and which had its UK premiere at The Queen's Theatre in Hornchurch, Essex on 28 August 2009.
In 2004, Hamilton City Council of New Zealand honoured O'Brien's contribution to the arts with a statue of Riff Raff, the character Richard played in The Rocky Horror Show, on the site of the former Embassy Cinema. His love of horror and similar genres can be traced back to the countless afternoons he spent watching double feature horror/science fiction films at the Embassy before he moved back to England. This was made ironic when, in June 2010, O'Brien was refused New Zealand citzenship and so could himself not settle in the country. He commented "They build a statue of me and celebrate me as a New Zealander, but I have to go on my knees and do all sorts of things, and I'm probably too old."
In September 2007 he reprised his role as the Child Catcher for the final 2 weeks of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's 5 year UK run, and then played the role in its Singapore engagement for the month of November, extended to 9 December. Also in December, he visited Hamilton, New Zealand and presented An Evening With Richard O'Brien, in conjunction with an independent NZ film group, planning to film a musical based on his early life, The King's Stilettoes.
In December 2008 Richard O'Brien donated his original script, Pig In Boots to 'The Wireless Theatre Company' who converted it into an audio pantomime. The show was recorded live at The Headliners Comedy Club in front of a studio audience with live FX and music. The production was opened by an original interview with Richard O'Brien.
In June 2010, the media reported that O'Brien had been denied citizenship after he applied to retire in New Zealand. In August 2010, New Zealand's The Dominion Post reported that O'Brien would be allowed residency and possibly citizenship as an "exceptional" case. On 16 August 2010, he appeared on a Celebrity Cash in the Attic episode, where he donated the takings from his sale of memorabilia to ''Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.
Category:1942 births Category:English comedy musicians Category:English film actors Category:English musical theatre composers Category:English television presenters Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:LGBT people from England Category:LGBT parents Category:Living people Category:Cross-dressers Category:People from Cheltenham Category:Transgender and transsexual actors Category:Transgender and transsexual writers Category:Transgender and transsexual entertainers
cy:Richard O'Brien de:Richard O’Brien es:Richard O'Brien fr:Richard O'Brien (acteur) io:Richard O'Brien it:Richard O'Brien nl:Richard O'Brien no:Richard O'Brien sv:Richard O'BrienThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.