Richard O’Brien

Born Richard Smith, on 25 March 1942 in Cheltenham, England, he had a difficult upbringing. His father was a soldier who went off to fight in World War II, leaving Richard and his mother to fend for themselves.

Around the age of 10, the family relocated to New Zealand. They spent six years in Tauranga, before moving to Hamilton.

“I’m very proud of New Zealand. What it gave me was its classlessness. It’s a meritocracy. In 1964, Britain was a very class-run society, but I was indifferent to that,” Richard says.

Richard struggled with reading and writing due to dyslexia when he was young. He was also bullied by his peers, which made him feel like an outsider. He found solace in music and theatre. Richard’s interest in music began to take a proper hold when he was a teenager, and he taught himself to play the guitar.

In the mid-1960s, he moved to London to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional musician. He played in various bands, including The Grenadiers and The Tornados, and started writing his own compositions. Despite his passion for music, he struggled to find success in the industry. While in New Zealand, Richard learned how to ride horses and used this skill to break into the film industry as a stuntman in Carry On Cowboy (1965).

Because there was already an actor named Richard Smith, Richard began using his mother’s maiden name, O’Brien, as his stage name. He studied method acting classes and auditioned for musicals, spending nine months in the touring production for Hair in 1970, and another nine months in the London-based production. In 1972, he met director Jim Shaman, who cast him in the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and in The Unseen Hand, in 1973.

That same year, at the age of 31, he wrote The Rocky Horror Show, a musical that combined his love for science fiction, horror and rock music. The musical began as a form of recreation, a distraction between the occasional acting gig.

“I didn’t see it as writing. I saw it more as building a picture like a collage and putting a lot of things together that I particularly liked, like Hammer films and B-movie dialogue,” he said.

The show featured a cast of eccentric characters, including a transvestite alien named Frank-N-Furter, originally played by Richard himself. The show’s campy humour, catchy songs and audience participation quickly made it an instant hit.

The Rocky Horror Show premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1973 as a workshop project.

“We all thought it was three weeks’ fun at the theatre upstairs at the Royal Court and after that we’d all be looking for another job. We were in London for seven years: the movie has become a cult classic,” Richard says.

The show’s success led to a move to a bigger theatre and a subsequent run in the West End. It won the 1973 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Musical. The show soundtrack, The Rocky Horror Show Original London Cast, was recorded during an off-stage weekend. It was released on the UK Records label in August 1973.

As its popularity continued to grow, it was eventually staged on Broadway in the United States, where it also received critical acclaim. The Rocky Horror Show finally toured New Zealand in 1978; its 1984 season famously included former prime minister Robert Muldoon in the cast, as narrator.

Richard co-wrote the screenplay with Jim Sharman, for the film adaptation of the musical, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which Jim directed. When it was released, it became an even bigger sensation, catapulting Richard to worldwide fame. The film featured an all-star cast – including Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter, Susan Sarandon as Janet, Barry Bostwick as Brad, and Meat Loaf as Eddie, not to mention Richard himself as Riff Raff – and went on to become a cultural phenomenon. Today, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is considered one of the most beloved cult films of all time.

Richard continued to work in the entertainment industry after the success of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He appeared in several films, including Flash Gordon (1980) and Dark City (1998), and wrote several other plays and musicals, including Shock Treatment (1981), a sequel to The Rocky Horror Show.

Richard also had success as a television presenter. He hosted the UK game show The Crystal Maze from 1990 to 1993 and appeared as a guest presenter on several other shows. He has also voice acted, providing the voice for the character Lawrence Fletcher on the animated series Phineas and Ferb.

His towering creation, though, is undoubtedly The Rocky Horror Picture Show, an enduring and influential presence in contemporary pop culture, inspiring generations of fans. By Richard’s own admission, the reasons for its continued success are mysterious, though he does suggest one answer:

“It’s not pretentious. It is a happy piece, and it resolves itself. There is comeuppance for Frank-N-Furter and that closure is important. But I am glad we can’t quite pin down the reasons for its success. If we do know, we’d be doing it again and again. The storyline is formulaic, the characters are archetypal. There is nothing terribly clever about it. It all comes together in something that makes it uniquely different.”

Richard has called New Zealand home for many years, now residing in the Bay of Plenty with his third wife Sabrina Graf.

“I’d been planning to come back to New Zealand since the day I left. I’ve always considered myself a Kiwi. Always,” he says.