The Only Fools and Horses star who has since starred in everything from Casualty to one of the most famous British films of the last 30 years
Vas Blackwood has played alongside Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham
TV actors are often well known from a number of shows, doing the rounds on well-known sitcoms and dramas.
You will probably recognise Vas Blackwood from his three-year stint on Casualty, but did you know he starred in an epsiode of Only Fools and Horses too?
The Londoner played Lennox Gilbey aka ‘The Shadow’ in Only Fools and Horses back in 1986.
In the episode dubbed, ‘The Longest Night’, The Shadow is tasked with giving Del Boy and Rodney the fright of their lives.
He plays an armed robber who brandishes a gun at the brothers in the manager’s office of a supermarket.
Gilbey later confides in the Trotters that he is not a thief by choice, but rather, he is in cahoots with the supermarket’s manager Mr Peterson to rob customers.
The reason behind this is that no one will give him a job and his wife is an alcoholic.
Instead of reporting the incident to the police, Del Boy sympathetically strikes a deal with the supermarket, on the condition that they offer Gilbey a job as a security guard.
The 58-year-old actor has also played various TV and movie roles throughout his career, including, Winston Churchill in The Lenny Henry Show (1987), David Sinclair in Casualty (1996-1997), Massive in Mean Machine (2001) and George in Creep (2004).
But he also starred in one of the most famous British films of the last 30 years.
Vas appeared as Rory Breaker, a drug-dealing gangster with a reputation for violence, in the 1998 Box Office smash hit, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
The actor played alongside superstars Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham in the Guy Ritchie hit.
The story is a heist involving a self-confident young card sharp who loses £500,000 to a powerful crime lord in a rigged game of three-card brag. To pay off his debts, he and his friends decide to rob a small-time gang who happen to be operating out of the flat next door.
The film brought Ritchie international acclaim and introduced actors Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham to worldwide audiences. Based on a $1.35 million budget, the film had a box office gross of over $28 million, making it a commercial success.
Vas’s cousin is 48-year-old London actor and media personality, Richard Blackwood, who has starred in EastEnders.
