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Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey took a remarkably indirect route to acting. Born in a small rural town in North Carolina, he attended Sanford Central High School before graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1960 with a degree in philosophy. What followed was less a conventional career path than a collection of lives: time in the US Army, work as a prison guard in Canada, and a move to Houston, Texas, after marrying a Texan heiress. In Houston, Bailey managed a ranch and competed in motorbike scrambling and sports car rallying. He also worked as a bouncer and later organized the first white-collar union in the US meat-packing industry. It is an unusually varied background for a performer, giving his story a restless quality even before acting became the main event. Soon after taking up acting, Bailey moved to London in 1968. Within a year of arriving, he became the first full-frontal male nude on the British stage, appearing at London’s Almost Free Theatre. It was a bold early marker in a career that would move across film, television and the West End stage. Bailey’s work cannot be neatly confined to acting alone. Alongside his screen and stage career, he is also a writer and the author of seven published books. The best known among the supplied titles is Taping Whores, published in 2004. From rural North Carolina to London theatre, Bailey’s career has been shaped by reinvention. Soldier, prison guard, ranch manager, motorsport competitor, bouncer, union organizer, actor and author: each turn adds another layer to a life that reached the screen and stage by anything but the expected route.