Brian Pettifer (born 1 January 1953) is a Scottish actor who has appeared in many television shows, and also on stage and in film. He is the younger brother of folk musician Linda Thompson.
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Early life
Pettifer was born in Durban, South Africa, he subsequently moved with his family to Glasgow, Scotland in 1961, where he lived for the next decade. He studied a junior course at the Royal Scottish Academy, where he happened to be in the same class as future acting colleague Alex Norton.
Career
He began his career as a child in various BBC Scotland productions including This Man Craig and Dr. Finlay's Casebook. In 1971 he moved to London during the course of that decade he featured in supporting roles in a number of TV series including Timeslip, Take Three Girls, Villains, Sutherland's Law, Last of the Summer Wine and Return of the Saint. He also played cousin Hughie in the long running Liverpool based 70s sitcom The Liver Birds. Between 1975 to 1978, he appeared as Bruce Leckie in national service comedy Get Some In!, where he was the butt of jokes directed at him by Corporal Marsh played by Tony Selby.
His first film role was in Lindsay Anderson's film if.... (1968). He also appeared in Anderson's O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982) playing the same character in all three Anderson films, that of Biles. His other film credits include roles in Amadeus (1984), A Christmas Carol (1984), Gulag (1985), Heavenly Pursuits (1986), Little Dorrit (1987), The Great Escape II: The Untold Story (1988), Loch Ness (1996), The House of Mirth (2000), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (2002), The Rocket Post (2004), Vanity Fair (2004) and Lassie (2005). In 2001, he played Alfred Meyer in the BBC/HBO film Conspiracy.
Pettifer was a regular in Rab C. Nesbitt, as Andra Binnie, a dim-witted companion of Rab, who was mainly seen propping up the bar. He reportedly hated filming the show and never watched any of the 50 episodes that he appeared in. Between 1995 to 1997, he appeared in all 20 episodes of Hamish Macbeth, as grocery shop owner Rory Campbell who tries to keep his ongoing relationship with Esme (Anne Lacey) a secret.
In 2001, he played the part of Dr. Cameron in the Radio 4 series entitled Adventures of a Black Bag, based on the books by A.J. Cronin that chart the early years of Dr. Finlay.
The following year he guest starred in an episode of Still Game. In 2005, he appeared in the first episode of the BBC drama Bleak House. In 2011 and 2013, he played Father Richards in The Field of Blood. In 2012, Brian Pettifer appeared as Archie Milgrow in the episode Old School Ties in the series New Tricks. He also appeared in the reaccuring role of Poupart in the BBC One series The Musketeers. In 2019, he appeared in an episode of Holby City playing patient Laurie Stocks.
In 2015, Pettifer appeared in the crime comedy The Legend of Barney Thomson along with his Hamish Macbeth co-star Robert Carlyle. The following year he played Angus in the remake of Whisky Galore! (2016). In 2021, he portrayed Billy a drunken bus passenger, alongside Timothy Spall in the road-trip drama The Last Bus.
Theatre
Pettifer's stage career has encompassed a wide range of supporting and ensemble roles in various Scottish and English theatre productions. In 1985 he appeared in the touring production of Trumpets and Raspberries, an English language adaption of the Italian farce comedy by Dario Fo which was originally staged at the Edinburgh Fringe then toured around Scotland. Following a sell out tour, a second tour took place the following year. Pettifer appeared in the dual role of Father Bridaine and De Strop in Declan Donnellan's Cheek by Jowl production of Alfred de Musset's Don't Fool with Love, paired with The Blind Man, which were both staged at the Donmar Warehouse in 1993. Pettifer played the School Board President in the satirical play The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol at the Almeida Theatre, London during the 1997-8 season, which later transferred to the King's Theatre in Edinburgh.
In 2002, Pettifer played the title role in Uncle Vanya, an adaption of Chekhov's play by poet Tom Leonard, with additional Scottish dialect. He played Snug in the Glyndebourne Festival Opera production of the Fairy-Queen, an opera by Henry Purcell based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It debuted at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2009 where it was lauded for its creative spectable, the production then toured internationally at the Opéra Comique, Paris in January 2010 and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York in March 2010 as part of a co-production with those two venues, a further a revival was staged at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2012. In 2015, Pettifer appeared alongside his Rab C. Nesbitt co-stars Gregor Fisher and Barbara Rafferty in the National Theatre of Scotland's touring production of Yer Granny, an adaption of La Nona by Argentine playwright Roberto Cossa, in this version the setting was changed to 1970's Scotland.
Pettifer made his directorial debut in Dead Funny by Terry Johnson, staged by the Borderline Theatre Company which toured around Scotland following its Edinburgh premiere in 2004. Two years later, he worked again with the company, where he directed Losing Louis by Simon Williams at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, an adaption of the farce by Simon Mendes de Costa.
Selected Filmography
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