Richard Moss

Richard Moss was born on July 5th 1950 in Derbyshire England. The younger of two sons born to Margaret Hannah and Thomas Fredrick Donald Moss, Richard was educated at Sterndale school near Buxton, and later in Australia and New Zealand. He studied mechanics at the Auckland Technical Institute and was set for a career mending earth moving equipment, when a burning desire to study his great passions of opera and theatre led to travel and study in the arts. Richard studied voice with Pacini and Milverton Carta, and acting at the Bailey Academy of Dramatic Art (Auckland NZ) with Gil Cornwall LGSM, who introduced him to the classics, a three years study of Shakespeare and Chekhov, a grounding in the techniques of Konstantin Stanislavsky, and the ideas of Jerzy Grotowsky. Mr Cornwall was more than a teacher and a mentor, he was also a powerful guiding light at one of life's major crossroads and his influence continues to light the path to this day. "When I first met Gil, I thought Ibsen was a brand of fountain pen. "Richard won second prize in the National Trinity College Shakespeare and Dickens awards in the year that talented and beautiful Jill Ellis Smith (Ellie Smith) was the winner, thus making proxime accessit so much sweeter. It was as a radio actor at the NZBC that Richard entered the profession, playing the tiny part of a soldier in a radio play for school children, entitled Young Tom's Drum, and written by Millie Evans; in this tiny part of the unnamed soldier, he had but one line of dialogue, whilst thumping another soldier on the nose, he said "Take that then", thus beginning a seven year run as a radio actor, soon moving from B player to A player status, and eventually to many leading roles, a number of serialised radio dramas, many short story readings, and collecting three Mobil Radio awards along the way. Children's theatre played a large part in his career when he joined the Auckland Independent Theatre, first as an actor, and later as actor/assistant director under the theatre's founder, director and principle writer Kevin J Wilson.