[4] McEnery trained (1962–1964) at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, playing, among others, Mosca in Ben Jonson's Volpone and Gaveston in Marlowe's Edward II.
His other film credits include The Duellists, Black Beauty, The Land That Time Forgot (1974) and The Krays (1990, as gangster Eddie Pellam), Mel Gibson's Hamlet (1990), and When Saturday Comes (1996).
In the 1980s, at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre, he took the title role in Gogol's The Government Inspector, directed by the Russian actor and director Oleg Tabakov, also performing on stage in Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (Wick Blagdon), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Hamlet), Nicholas Nickleby (Mr Mantalini/Mr Snevellicci), Waiting for Godot, Curse of the Starving Classes for the RSC, Taking Sides, Precious Bane with Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus with Steven Berkoff, and Bingo with Patrick Stewart.
For television, his credits include Our Mutual Friend, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Little Dorrit, The Buddha of Suburbia, Tusitala (as Robert Louis Stevenson), Jamaica Inn, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Thomas De Quincey), and the title role in Caligula A.D.
Joining The Globe Theatre in 1997 for its inaugural productions Henry V (Pistol), and As You Like It (Jaques), over the next ten years he performed in King Lear (The Fool), Richard II (John of Gaunt and The Gardener), Edward II (Archbishop Of Canterbury), Pericles (Pericles), The Merchant of Venice (Shylock), Antony and Cleopatra (Enobarbus), A Mad World my Masters (Master Shortrod Harebrain), A Chaste Maid In Cheapside, and Romeo and Juliet (Mercutio).