Richard Southard

Richard Southard is one of the British Horror Studio’s gentlest and most quietly beloved character performers: benevolent, soft-spoken, warmly eccentric, and blessed with the sort of kindly screen presence that seems to belong to another age of cinema. There is something of the old storybook craftsman about him, the sort of man one could imagine giving life to Pinocchio, carrying with him an air of patience, civility, tenderness and quiet moral intelligence.

A lifelong lover of cinema, Southard’s passion for film reaches back to childhood, when he would sneak into screenings and lose himself in the magic of the picture house. He has worked with Hex Studios for over twelve years, first appearing as Colonel Von Hardenburg in The Devil’s Machine, also known as Automata. In the forthcoming eighteenth-century Gothic romance Sawney, he plays Dr Cornwallis, the chief doctor of a military expedition sent to hunt down Sawney Bean, bringing a rare authenticity to the role through his own real-life experience as a consultant doctor.

Southard’s performances are gentle, subtle and deeply humane. His compassion is infectious, lending civility and tenderness to the scenes he inhabits, even when the worlds around him are cruel, strange or grotesque. He also appears in a hilarious forthcoming role as a tourist in the highly anticipated follow-up to Spoiling You, further revealing the warmth and understated comic charm that make him such a cherished presence within the studio’s repertory.