Richard Pate
Actor • Producer • Creative Collaborator
Richard Pate is one of the British Horror Studio’s longest-standing collaborators, an actor, producer, and creative ally whose association with Lawrie Brewster stretches back to the early foundations of Hex Studios. Known to friends and collaborators as Rick, Pate brings to the repertory a distinctive face, a memorable Alabama drawl, and a deep affection for classic cinema, old Hollywood glamour, film noir, and the darker romance of the screen. In many ways, he has been part of the intellectual and spiritual prelude to the British Horror Studio from the beginning.
In The Devil’s Machine, originally known as Automata, Pate played Minister Von Schill, a Prussian state minister whose formal severity showed his gift for period menace and dry authority. In The Black Gloves, he appeared as William DeLancy, the lover of a doomed actress, bringing a noir sensibility and mournful elegance to the film’s 1940s Gothic world. He later appeared in Ghost Crew as journalist Rick Foster, showing another side of his screen identity: curious, sardonic, persistent, and quietly haunted.
His most chilling performance to date may be in Black Chariot, where he plays The Devil, a metaphorical bogeyman figure whose appearance had a strong and disturbing effect on audiences at the Romford Horror Film Festival. Pate approaches performance with a love of interpretation, improvisation, and Sanford Meisner technique, allowing his characters to feel unpredictable, lived-in, and psychologically charged. That sense of danger is matched by a dry wit, seen in his turn as Rick the Orderly in Amicus Productions’ In the Grip of Terror.
Pate is also beloved by British Horror Studio audiences for his flamboyant performance as King Gerind in The Slave and the Sorcerer, a glam-rock, sword-and-sorcery warlord with something of Fist of the North Star in his theatrical swagger. He is currently reprising the role in The Slave and the General, and also appears as an outdoor mercenary of the North American Great Plains in the forthcoming 18th-century horror epic Sawney. Whether sinister, humorous, noir-haunted, or grandly villainous, Richard Pate remains one of the studio’s most distinctive character actors: Southern Gothic, dryly witty, deeply loyal, and impossible to mistake for anyone else.
In The Devil’s Machine, originally known as Automata, Pate played Minister Von Schill, a Prussian state minister whose formal severity showed his gift for period menace and dry authority. In The Black Gloves, he appeared as William DeLancy, the lover of a doomed actress, bringing a noir sensibility and mournful elegance to the film’s 1940s Gothic world. He later appeared in Ghost Crew as journalist Rick Foster, showing another side of his screen identity: curious, sardonic, persistent, and quietly haunted.
His most chilling performance to date may be in Black Chariot, where he plays The Devil, a metaphorical bogeyman figure whose appearance had a strong and disturbing effect on audiences at the Romford Horror Film Festival. Pate approaches performance with a love of interpretation, improvisation, and Sanford Meisner technique, allowing his characters to feel unpredictable, lived-in, and psychologically charged. That sense of danger is matched by a dry wit, seen in his turn as Rick the Orderly in Amicus Productions’ In the Grip of Terror.
Pate is also beloved by British Horror Studio audiences for his flamboyant performance as King Gerind in The Slave and the Sorcerer, a glam-rock, sword-and-sorcery warlord with something of Fist of the North Star in his theatrical swagger. He is currently reprising the role in The Slave and the General, and also appears as an outdoor mercenary of the North American Great Plains in the forthcoming 18th-century horror epic Sawney. Whether sinister, humorous, noir-haunted, or grandly villainous, Richard Pate remains one of the studio’s most distinctive character actors: Southern Gothic, dryly witty, deeply loyal, and impossible to mistake for anyone else.
“A Southern Gothic character actor of dry wit, noir melancholy, and devilish theatrical force.”
Selected Works
Black ChariotBritish Horror Studio
The Slave and the SorcererHex Studios
In the Grip of TerrorAmicus Productions
The Devil’s MachineHex Studios
The Black GlovesHex Studios
Ghost CrewHex Studios