Happy Birthday Bernard Hill!
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Bernard Hill (born December 17, 1944, Manchester, England, UK) is a British actor of film, stage and television. He attended Xaverian College although at the time it was known as “Xaverian School”. Hill is reportedly an experienced horseback rider and a purple belt in karate. He also attended Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama at the same time as Richard Griffiths. Hill came to prominence in the role of the unemployed Yosser Hughes, a working-class man ultimately driven to the edge by an uncaring system, in Alan Bleasdale’s BBC Play for Today The Black Stuff (1979) and its more famous series sequel (also by Bleasdale), Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). His character’s much-repeated phrase “giz a job” became popular with protesters against Margaret Thatcher’s government, because of the high unemployment of the time. Previously, he had taken smaller parts in a number of British television dramas, notably appearing as the no-nonsense Roman soldier Gratus in I, Claudius (1976). He also played the Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York in the BBC’s 1982 productions of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays. Also on TV, he played the part of Tom Higdon in The Burston Rebellion (1985).
