English actor, playwright, screenwriter and director Rikki Beadle-Blair was BOTD in 1961. Born in London to a working-class family, he and his siblings were raised by his openly gay mother. He developed an early interest in theatre, studying drama at the Bermondsey Lamp Post, the Anna Scher Theatre and the Old Vic Youth Theatre. He rose to public attention as the screenwriter of Nigel Finch‘s 1995 film Stonewall, a fictionalised account of the gay and trans protesters who led the Stonewall Riots in 1960s New York City. Beadle-Blair later adapted his screenplay for a stage production, performed by his production company Team Angelica. In 2001, he created the TV comedy series Metrosexuality, about a racially and sexually diverse group of friends living in West London, co-starring Beadle-Blair as an openly gay father. In an intriguing change of pace, he travelled to Jamaica in 2004 to make the radio documentary The Roots of Homophobia, exploring homophobic attitudes in contemporary Jamaican culture. The writer of over 40 stage plays, he best-known work is 2007’s FIT, originally commissioned by Manchester arts organisation queerupnorth and the Stonewall Foundation to combat homophobia in high schools. After a national tour, Beadle-Blair adapted and directed a 2010 feature film of the same name. In 2010, he and his creative partner John R. Gordon founded Team Angelica Publishing, committed to publishing and promoting work by LGBTQ people of colour. Beadle-Blair was appointed a Member of the British Empire in 2015, in recognition of his services to drama. He continues to live and work in London. Openly gay since forever, his current relationship status is unknown.