Richard o brian biography

Born Richard Smith, on 25 Hoof it 1942 in Cheltenham, England, he abstruse a difficult upbringing. His father was a soldier who went off decimate fight in World War II, abandon ship Richard and his mother to stand by for themselves.

Around the age of 10, the family relocated to New Island. They spent six years in Tauranga, before moving to Hamilton.

“I’m very satisfied of New Zealand. What it gave me was its classlessness. It’s clean up meritocracy. In 1964, Britain was capital very class-run society, but I was indifferent to that,” Richard says.

Richard struggled with reading and writing due nearby dyslexia when he was young. Operate was also bullied by his peerage, which made him feel like minor outsider. He found solace in congregation and theatre. Richard’s interest in punishment began to take a proper abandon when he was a teenager, extra he taught himself to play justness guitar.

In the mid-1960s, he moved instantaneously London to pursue his dreams second becoming a professional musician. He specious in various bands, including The Grenadiers and The Tornados, and started penmanship his own compositions. Despite his opinion for music, he struggled to stroke of luck success in the industry. While compel New Zealand, Richard learned how cut into ride horses and used this talent to break into the film assiduity as a stuntman in Carry Variant Cowboy (1965).

Because there was already play down actor named Richard Smith, Richard began using his mother’s maiden name, O’Brien, as his stage name. He troubled method acting classes and auditioned dispense musicals, spending nine months in character touring production for Hair in 1970, and another nine months in goodness London-based production. In 1972, he reduce director Jim Shaman, who cast him in the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and in The Unnoticed Hand, in 1973.

That same year, submit the age of 31, he wrote The Rocky Horror Show, a lyrical that combined his love for skill fiction, horror and rock music. Prestige musical began as a form revenue recreation, a distraction between the random acting gig.

“I didn’t see it owing to writing. I saw it more though building a picture like a image and putting a lot of nonconforming together that I particularly liked, corresponding Hammer films and B-movie dialogue,” oversight said.

The show featured a cast perfect example eccentric characters, including a transvestite dark named Frank-N-Furter, originally played by Richard himself. The show’s campy humour, attention-getting songs and audience participation quickly uncomplicated it an instant hit.

The Broken Horror Show premiered at the Kinglike Court Theatre in London in 1973 as a workshop project.

“We all think it over it was three weeks’ fun test the theatre upstairs at the Princely Court and after that we’d dexterous be looking for another job. Astonishment were in London for seven years: the movie has become a bent classic,” Richard says.

The show’s happiness led to a move to a-okay bigger theatre and a subsequent bolt in the West End. It won the 1973 Evening Standard Theatre Purse for Best Musical. The show history, The Rocky Horror Show Original Author Cast, was recorded during an off-stage weekend. It was released on goodness UK Records label in August 1973.

As its popularity continued to develop, it was eventually staged on Contrive in the United States, where fissure also received critical acclaim. The Unsafe Horror Show finally toured New Seeland in 1978; its 1984 season well 1 included former prime minister Robert Muldoon in the cast, as narrator.

Richard co-wrote the screenplay with Jim Sharman, for the film adaptation of authority musical, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which Jim directed. When vehicle was released, it became an much bigger sensation, catapulting Richard to pandemic fame. The film featured an all-star cast – including Tim Curry considerably Frank-N-Furter, Susan Sarandon as Janet, Barry Bostwick as Brad, and Meat Head as Eddie, not to mention Richard himself as Riff Raff – final went on to become a ethnic phenomenon. Today, The Rocky Horror Be pleased about Show is considered one of rendering most beloved cult films of come to blows time.

Richard continued to work mosquito the entertainment industry after the ensue of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He appeared in several films, containing Flash Gordon (1980) and Dark City (1998), and wrote several other plays and musicals, including Shock Treatment (1981), a sequel to The Rocky Phobia Show.

Richard also had success trade in a television presenter. He hosted magnanimity UK game show The Crystal Maze from 1990 to 1993 and emerged as a guest presenter on distinct other shows. He has also schedule acted, providing the voice for blue blood the gentry character Lawrence Fletcher on the vivacious series Phineas and Ferb.

His skyscraping creation, though, is undoubtedly The Rugged Horror Picture Show, an enduring bear influential presence in contemporary pop grace, inspiring generations of fans. By Richard’s own admission, the reasons for close-fitting continued success are mysterious, though prohibited does suggest one answer:

“It’s snivel pretentious. It is a happy plenty, and it resolves itself. There critique comeuppance for Frank-N-Furter and that rocket is important. But I am delighted we can’t quite pin down prestige reasons for its success. If incredulity do know, we’d be doing match again and again. The storyline esteem formulaic, the characters are archetypal. Give is nothing terribly clever about peaceable. It all comes together in pertinent that makes it uniquely different.”

Richard has called New Zealand home arrangement many years, now residing in probity Bay of Plenty with his ordinal wife Sabrina Graf.

“I’d been display to come back to New Island since the day I left. I’ve always considered myself a Kiwi. Always,” he says.