About
Ladybeard is the stage name of Australian professional actor, heavy metal singer, wrestler and martial artist Richard Magarey, whose peculiar stage persona as a five-year-old girl often crossplaying in little girl costumes made him an internet sensation in Asia circa 2011. In mid-2015, he joined Japanese Pop-Metal band LadyBaby and his online popularity soared worldwide when the clip of their debut song Nippon Manju was released to Youtube.
Personal Life
Richard Magarey was born in 1983 in Adelaide, Australia. He graduated from the Flinders University of South Australia Drama Centre in 2004 with a Bachelor of Creative Arts. Since 2011, he lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Career
Acting
In 2006, he moved to Hong-Kong and travelled around Asia starring in a number of flicks and commercials (shown below), both as an actor and stuntman.
Wrestling
Around the same time he arrived in Hong-Kong, Magarey started performing with the Hong Kong Wrestling Federation in which he created his Ladybeard character, also known as WuSoLui, mixing his muscular bear-like stature with the persona of a pop singer little girl usually wearing dresses and pigtails (example shown below).
Music
More than his stage name, Ladybear was also the name of a metal band in which he performed as the vocalist[1].
His popularity among Southern Asian people was so impressive that he conducted several interviews, including one for Hong-Kong TVB J2 in the summer 2011 (shown below).
Modeling
In Japan, Magarey began pursuing a career in modeling using his persona. On August 11th 2014, Japanese news site Girls Walker interviewed him about the release of his first pin-up dvd[2]. The story was picked by videogame and Japanese culture site Kotaku on August 14th[3], noting that some photographs take place in a well-known Japanese location (shown below).
Internet Presence
Ladybeard has his own official website[4] as well as an official Facebook page with over 57 000 likes[5] and a Twitter account with over 83 000 subscribers[6]. During the course of 2014, he collaborated with Hideaki Kobayashi, also known as the “Sailor Suit Old Man” and another Japanese internet sensation, in various photographs[7] (shown below).
LadyBaby’s Debut
On July 4th, 2015, Japanese Pop-Metal band LadyBaby released their debut song Nippon Manju, featuring vocalist Ladybeard (shown below). The Youtube clip accumulated over 6 700 000 views in the next two months.
Soon after, news websites such as Forbes[8], Mashable] and The Daily Mail[10] issued pieces about the phenomenon, highlighting this weird combination of a western hairy muscular man with pigtails and a wide range of costumes performing among Japanese young girls.
Search Interest
External References
[1]Adelaide Now – Cross-dressing Adelaide wrestler ‘Ladybeard’ a huge hit in Hong Kong
[2]Girls Walker – 話題沸騰中☆ヒゲ女装レディビアードに迫る！ (In Japanese)
[3]Kotaku – Ladybeard Is One Pretty Pin-Up Model and Wrestler
[6]Twitter – Ladybeard@23日マレーシア
[7]Rocket News 24 – When Ladybeard meets “Sailor Suit Old Man”, it’s an explosion of manly cuteness【Photos】
[8]Forbes – apan’s Hairiest Metal Entertainer Invites You To ‘Enjoy And Taste Many Japanese Products’
[9]Mashable – A pigtailed heavy-metal singer and his cute sidekicks are a J-pop sensation
[10]Daily Mail – Meet the Aussie wrestler named Ladybeard who is taking Japan and the Internet by storm