TV icon Eric Richard shot to fame after playing the role of Sergeant Bob Cryer in the hit ITV show The Bill. Eric starred as the copper for more than 789 episodes between 1984 and 2004.
His character left the show after he was accidentally shot and injured by PC Dale Smith. But Eric would go on to make a number of guest appearances over the years in different storylines.
After the success of his role on The Bill, the now 81-year-old actor went on to star in two episodes of BBC soap EastEnders in 2018. He took on the role of ex-cabbie Maurice – a friend of Kat Moon’s father who made claims about sexual abuse in the family.
Kat was left devastated when Maurice told her more information about the sexual abuse she suffered from her uncle Harry as a child, claiming that her dad Charlie may have known about it.
Eric then went on to appear in the medical drama Holby City and was cast in Christopher Nolan’s 2017 Hollywood blockbuster Dunkirk alongside Kenneth Branagh, Harry Styles, and Tom Hardy.
Meanwhile, in his private life, Eric shared three children with his wife Tina and resides in Kent.
The actor has also kept himself busy by setting up the Dickens Theatre Company of Medway in Rochester.
In 2004, his family hit the headlines when tragedy struck. Eric’s grandson Charlie Smith died in the Indian Ocean tsunami that hit on Boxing Day of that year.
He was the youngest British person to lose their life in the tragedy, passing away at the age of just two months old.
Eric opened up about his heartbreaking loss in a TV interview with ITV in 2005. “The first wave came in, and Charlie was lying on the beach, so they picked him up.
Then the second wave came, and so the family got themselves beyond the beach, houses, and restaurants and pinned themselves to palm trees… then it hit,” he said.
He continued: “He [Charlie’s father] and Charlie were being battered and smashed and crashed through this extraordinary wave, in and out of houses, banging into trees, being hit by breeze blocks and chairs and tables and furniture. In the midst of that would have been the blow that would have killed Charlie.”
This year Eric reunited with his Bill cast members 13 years after the show was taken off the air.
He snapped up a selfie with PC Tony Stamp star Graham Cole as he attended The Bill Reunion 9 at the London Cinema Museum.
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