David "Dai" Bradley was born on 27 September 1953 and is an English actor known for his debut role of Billy Casper in the critically acclaimed 1969 film Kes, directed by Ken Loach.
18 Facts About Dai Bradley
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David Bradley was born in the hamlet of Stubbs, near Barnsley.
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Dai Bradley's mother was Nora, a seamstress, and his father was Horace "Pop" Bradley, a miner who worked from North Gawber Colliery.
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Dai Bradley has said that the making of the film was a happy one.
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Dai Bradley received BAFTA's Award for Best Newcomer for his role.
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Subsequently Dai Bradley left school at the age of 17, moved to London and began training as an actor with the National Theatre Company.
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Dai Bradley changed his first name to Dai when he joined Equity, the actors' union, which already had an actor named David Bradley on its books.
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Dai Bradley had guest roles in episodes of popular, established drama series such as Z-Cars and A Family at War.
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Dai Bradley was cast as Alan Strang in Peter Shaffer's Equus during the mid-1970s.
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Dai Bradley was offered the opportunity to take over the role in the Broadway production, but turned it down due to exhaustion.
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The play, which concerns a priest who is obsessed with a young student, was the recipient of the Society of West End Theatre Award for Play of the Year and, with Dai Bradley contributing what was referred to as "a beautifully spontaneous performance" as the student opposite Hawthorne's guilt-ridden Abbe de Pradts.
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Dai Bradley played notable roles in several 1970s films including Malachi's Cove, Absolution, All Quiet on the Western Front and the Zulu prequel Zulu Dawn, but by the early 1980s his film career had largely dissipated.
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Dai Bradley became an adherent of the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti.
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Dai Bradley embarked on several other unsuccessful projects as well: a board game, a television series focused on high-stakes backgammon, and a film about medical ethics.
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In 1999, when Kes was re-released in cinemas for the film's 30th anniversary, Dai Bradley made hundreds of appearances in the United Kingdom with the film's other surviving cast members.
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In 2003, Dai Bradley appeared as the Catholic priest Father Michael, one of three leads in Nigel Barker's critically acclaimed independent film The Refuge.
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Dai Bradley returned to the big screen alongside Jason Statham in the 2013 film Hummingbird.
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On 8 September 2015, Dai Bradley appeared in an episode of Holby City titled "An Eye for an Eye" as an elderly man who perceives himself as a "bad luck charm".