Lawrie Brewster
Actor • Director • Producer
Lawrie Brewster is best known as a director, producer, and founder of Hex Studios and the British Horror Studio, but his relationship with performance reaches back to his early theatre training at Fife College. Though most often found behind the camera, Brewster has built a surprising body of screen appearances, beginning with his comic silent-film work as the Food Penguin in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Morgan M. Morgansen’s Date with Destiny and Morgan and Destiny’s Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo, films connected to the hitRECord creative circle and the Sundance/SXSW festival world.
For many years, Brewster’s acting work remained largely cameo-based, until the British Horror Studio’s sword-and-sorcery cycle encouraged him back before the camera. In The Slave and the Sorcerer, he gave a fan-favourite turn as Arlo the Torturer, a comic, over-the-top, hedonistic villain inspired in part by Vernon Wells’ flamboyant Bennett in Commando. He also appeared as the Master of Riddles, a romantic and chivalric knight whose confident theatricality meets a suitably sticky end. The success of these performances led to further appearances, including the reprise of those characters in The Slave and the General and a role in For We Are Many 2, directed by Megan Tremethick, opposite Laurence R. Harvey.
More recently, Brewster stepped into a more substantial dramatic role as Dr Mayley in Amicus Productions’ In the Grip of Terror, acting opposite Nick Ford in one of the film’s most distinctive segments. He also appears in the forthcoming 18th-century horror epic Sawney, currently in post-production, playing a cad lawyer and rakish playboy opposite Dorian Todd. Alongside this, he stars in the British Horror Studio’s experimental feature The Porcelain Pianist, available through the studio’s YouTube channel, continuing his interest in directed improvisation and unusual performance structures.
Able to move between authoritative institutional figures and flamboyant, camp, cultish grotesques, Brewster is emerging as a character actor within his own studio: part establishment voice, part Dr Frank-N-Furter, and part mischievous ringmaster. Whether before or behind the camera, his performances carry the same anarchic theatricality that defines much of his filmmaking: romantic, grotesque, comic, and unashamedly devoted to the strange magic of cinema.
For many years, Brewster’s acting work remained largely cameo-based, until the British Horror Studio’s sword-and-sorcery cycle encouraged him back before the camera. In The Slave and the Sorcerer, he gave a fan-favourite turn as Arlo the Torturer, a comic, over-the-top, hedonistic villain inspired in part by Vernon Wells’ flamboyant Bennett in Commando. He also appeared as the Master of Riddles, a romantic and chivalric knight whose confident theatricality meets a suitably sticky end. The success of these performances led to further appearances, including the reprise of those characters in The Slave and the General and a role in For We Are Many 2, directed by Megan Tremethick, opposite Laurence R. Harvey.
More recently, Brewster stepped into a more substantial dramatic role as Dr Mayley in Amicus Productions’ In the Grip of Terror, acting opposite Nick Ford in one of the film’s most distinctive segments. He also appears in the forthcoming 18th-century horror epic Sawney, currently in post-production, playing a cad lawyer and rakish playboy opposite Dorian Todd. Alongside this, he stars in the British Horror Studio’s experimental feature The Porcelain Pianist, available through the studio’s YouTube channel, continuing his interest in directed improvisation and unusual performance structures.
Able to move between authoritative institutional figures and flamboyant, camp, cultish grotesques, Brewster is emerging as a character actor within his own studio: part establishment voice, part Dr Frank-N-Furter, and part mischievous ringmaster. Whether before or behind the camera, his performances carry the same anarchic theatricality that defines much of his filmmaking: romantic, grotesque, comic, and unashamedly devoted to the strange magic of cinema.
“The British Horror Studio’s mischievous ringmaster before and behind the camera.”
Selected Works
In the Grip of TerrorAmicus Productions
The Slave and the SorcererHex Studios
The Porcelain PianistThe B-Team
Morgan M. Morgansen’s Date with DestinyhitRECord
Morgan and Destiny’s Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin ZoohitRECord