Kenneth Blackburn

Born at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in April 1935, Ken was brought up in the St Paul’s district of Bristol. Along with his older brother John, born in 1933. They were evacuees to the South West of England during the Second World War. After the war ended he and his family emigrated to New Zealand.

Ken has been a Free Lance Actor and Director now for over sixty years and has played a wide range of characters in Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. Notably among these have been.

* Hank Blair in the series “White Fang” for Atlantis Films

* Sir Bruce Warner in “Shortland Street”

* The Boss in the series “Gliding On"

In the theatre he was awarded Best Actor as Vladimir in “Waiting for Godot.” Best Actor as Davies in “The Caretaker” and appeared throughout Australia Canada and England in Stage performances. In 1974 he was honoured by the Polish Ministry of Culture with the “Amicus Poloniae” for fostering cultural relations between Poland and foreign countries. He was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006 and awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award’ in 2017.

Ken has a renowned expertise in accents and dialects which has often been called on for narration work and commercial voice overs. He narrated the BLITZ KIDS series for BBC radio Bristol.

Today he lives in the North Island of New Zealand with his wife Carolyn, and they share their two storey colonial villa with their two dogs.