Mat Fraser (born 1962) is an English rock musician, actor, writer and performance artist. He has thalidomide-induced phocomelia. In 2017, he was cast to play Shakespeare's Richard III at the Hull Truck Theatre as part of Hull City of Culture 2017. Musical career Between 1980 and 1995 Fraser was a drummer with several rock bands including Fear of Sex, The Reasonable Strollers, Joyride, The Grateful Dub, and Living in Texas, who had a number one single in Italy. Fraser played the drums with Graeae Theatre Company's "Reasons to be Cheerful" at the 2012 Paralympics opening ceremony, where he also hosted the pre-televised section, and with Coldplay during the closing ceremony. Acting career Fraser left drumming to join Graeae Theatre Company, Europe's leading disabled theatre company, after their production of Ubu inspired him to change careers. He worked in forum theatre for Graeae for several months, then landed the part of Dr Prentice in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. He is now a patron of Graeae. Subsequent theatre roles in the 1990s included the Group K production of Marisol and the title role in Johnny Sol at the Croydon Warehouse. He wrote 2005's Thalidomide!! A Musical, in which he and Anna Winslet played all the roles. His first major television role was in the three-part World War II drama series Unknown Soldier (ITV, 1998). In 2003 he appeared as the seer Calchas in the television miniseries Helen of Troy based on Homer's Iliad. In 2009 he appeared in Channel Four's Cast Offs, a six-part comedy-drama series satirising reality television . Fraser has been associated with the use of the term "spacking up" to describe when a non-disabled actor plays the part of a disabled person rather than the part going to a disabled actor, as a play on "blacking up", used to describe the controversial practice where non-black actors take on the characters of black people. The term was actually coined by one of the show's writers, in the line "spacking up is the new blacking up". Fraser has appeared on television in a number of other productions including Metrosexuality and Every Time You Look at Me. His film Kung Fu Flid was released in 2009, starring Faye Tozer (formerly of pop group Steps), Frank Harper and Terry Stone. Fraser appeared in the RTÉ One soap opera Fair City in June 2011, playing Esther's son David. In 2012 he appeared