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David Tennant
David Tennant is the stage name of David John McDonald (born
18 April 1971), a Scottish actor from Bathgate, West Lothian. He is best
known for portraying the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in the television
series Doctor Who.
Already a well-known theatre actor, Tennant achieved wider fame for his TV roles in Casanova and Doctor Who, as well as his film role as Barty Crouch Jr in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He was ranked the 24th most influential person in the UK's media, on the 9 July 2007 MediaGuardian supplement of The Guardian. Tennant also appeared in the paper's annual media rankings in 2006. Early lifeTennant was born in Bathgate , West Lothian and grew up in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father (the Reverend Alexander ("Sandy") McDonald) was the local Church of Scotland minister (and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1997). Tennant was educated at Ralston Primary and Paisley Grammar School where he enjoyed a fruitful relationship with English teacher Moira Robertson, who was among the first to realise his true potential.[1] He also was educated at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he was friends with Louise Delamere.
At the age of three, Tennant told his parents that he wanted to become an actor because he was mad about Doctor Who. Although such an aspiration might have been common for any British child of the 1970s, Tennant says he was "absurdly single-minded" in pursuing his goal. He adopted the professional name "Tennant" — inspired by Neil Tennant, the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys[2] — because there was another David McDonald already on the books of the Equity union. CareerTennant's first professional role upon graduating from drama school was in a staging of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui co-starring Ashley Jensen, one of a few plays in which he performed as part of the agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company. Tennant also made a striking early television appearance as a transsexual in Rab C Nesbitt. Moving to London in the early 1990s, Tennant lodged with comic actress and writer Arabella Weir, with whom he became close friends and then godfather to one of her children. He has subsequently appeared alongside Weir in many productions; as a guest in her spoof television series, Posh Nosh; in the Doctor Who audio drama Exile and as panelists on the West Wing Ultimate Quiz on More4. Tennant developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company for whom he specialised in comic roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors (a role he recorded for the 1998 Arkangel Complete Shakespeare production of the play) and Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals, although he also played the tragic role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. It was announced on 30 August 2007 that he is returning to the RSC, to play Hamlet (alongside Patrick Stewart) and Berowne (in Love's Labours Lost) from July to November 2008.[3] In 1995, Tennant appeared at the Royal National Theatre, London, playing the role of Nicholas Beckett in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. The plot required Tennant to appear near-naked on stage. Tennant appeared in several high-profile dramas for the BBC, including Takin' Over the Asylum (1994), He Knew He Was Right (2004), Blackpool (2004), Casanova (2005) and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). In film, he has appeared in Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things, and as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. One of his earliest big screen roles was in Jude (1996), in which he shared a scene with his Doctor Who predecessor Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect. Doctor Who (2005–Present)Tennant's name was put forward as a possible candidate for the role of the Ninth Doctor for the new series that began in March 2005, although the role eventually went to Christopher Eccleston. With Eccleston's announcement on 30 March that he would not be returning for a second series, the BBC confirmed Tennant as his replacement in a press release on 16 April. He made his first, brief appearance in the episode "The Parting of the Ways" (2005) after the regeneration scene, and also appeared in a special 7-minute mini-episode shown as part of the 2005 Children in Need appeal, broadcast on 18 November 2005. He began filming the new series of Doctor Who in late July 2005. His first full-length outing as the Doctor was a sixty-minute special, "The Christmas Invasion", first broadcast on Christmas Day 2005. He was also seen in early December in the ITV drama Secret Smile. Tennant has expressed enthusiasm about fulfilling his childhood dream. He remarked to an interviewer for GWR FM, "Who wouldn't want to be the Doctor? I've even got my own TARDIS!" In 2006, readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted Tennant "Best Doctor", over perennial favourite Tom Baker.[4] In 2007, Tennant's Doctor Who was voted the "coolest character" on UK television in a Radio Times survey[5]. Tennant had previously had a small role in the BBC's animated Doctor Who webcast Scream of the Shalka. Not originally cast in the production, Tennant happened to be recording a radio play in a neighbouring studio, and when he discovered what was being recorded next door managed to convince the director to give him a small role. This personal enthusiasm for the series had also been expressed by his participation in several audio plays based on the Doctor Who television series which had been produced by Big Finish Productions, although he did not play the Doctor in any of these productions. In 2004 Tennant played a lead role in the Big Finish audio play series Dalek Empire III. He played the part of Galanar, a young man who is given an assignment to discover the secrets of the Daleks. In 2005, he starred in UNIT: The Wasting for Big Finish, recreating his role of Brimmicombe-Wood from a Doctor Who Unbound play Sympathy for the Devil. He also played an unnamed Time Lord in another Doctor Who Unbound play Exile. UNIT: The Wasting, was recorded between Tennant getting the role of the Doctor and it being announced. He also played the title role in Big Finish's adaptation of Bryan Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (2005). In 2006 he recorded abridged audio books of The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner, The Feast of the Drowned by Stephen Cole and The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards, for BBC Worldwide. Tennant will continue to play the Tenth Doctor into the revived programme's fourth series in 2008, and in the three specials that will make up the 2009 series.[6] The Daily Mirror has also reported that Tennant is forbidden from attending Doctor Who fan conventions while he is playing the role.[7] He said at the Children in Need concert that his favourite Doctor Who story is Genesis of the Daleks. He has also stated that his favourite monsters are the Zygons. He made his directorial debut directing the Doctor Who Confidential episode that accompanies Steven Moffat's episode "Blink", entitled "Do You Remember The First Time?", which aired on 9 June 2007. In 2007, Tennant's Tenth Doctor appeared alongside Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor, at age 56, in a Doctor Who special for Children in Need, written by Steven Moffat entitled "Time Crash". This was the first official time that a Doctor from the New Series met a Doctor from the original 26-year run.[8] This is also the first "multi-Doctor" story in the New Series and the first since The Two Doctors in 1985. Other work (2005-present)Tennant's casting in Doctor Who has not prevented him from taking on other roles. In January 2006, Tennant took a one-day break from shooting Doctor Who to play Richard Hoggart in a dramatisation of the 1960 Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial, The Chatterley Affair. The play was written by Andrew Davies and directed by Doctor Who's James Hawes for the digital television channel BBC Four. Hoggart's son Simon Hoggart praised Tennant's performance in The Guardian newspaper. "[E]xtremely convincing — the suit, the hair, the Yorkshire accent, and trickiest of all, the speech rhythms. The only thing wrong is his sideburns. To do this film he had to take 24 hours off from making Doctor Who in Cardiff and, as he explained, the sideburns would not grow back in a day."[9] On 25 February 2007, Tennant starred in Recovery, a 90-minute BBC1 drama written by Tony Marchant. Tennant played Alan, a self-made building site manager who attempted to rebuild his life after suffering a debilitating brain injury. His co-star in the drama was friend Sarah Parish, with whom he had previously appeared in Blackpool and an episode of Doctor Who. She joked that "we're like George and Mildred - in 20 years' time we'll probably be doing a ropey old sitcom in a terraced house in Preston."[10] Later in 2007 he starred in Learners, a BBC comedy drama written by and starring Jessica Hynes (another Doctor Who co-star, in the episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood"), in which he played a Christian driving instructor who became the object of a student's affection. Learners was broadcast on BBC One on 11th November 2007. Tennant will play Sir Arthur Eddington in the upcoming biopic Einstein and Eddington, a BBC and HBO co-production, with Andy Serkis depicting Albert Einstein.[11] It has also been announced that Tennant will appear in the 2007 Christmas special of BBC comedy Extras alongside Ricky Gervais. Tennant is the voice behind the latest 2007 advertising campaign for catalogue retailer Argos, although he uses an Estuary English accent as in his role as the Doctor and not his natural Scottish voice. But for an advert for The Proclaimers new album he uses his usual Scottish accent. He will appear in Love's Labour's Lost and Hamlet for the RSC in the second half of 2008. PopularityIn December 2005, The Stage newspaper listed Tennant at #6 in its "Top Ten" listing of the most influential UK television artists of the year, citing his roles in Blackpool, Casanova, Secret Smile and Doctor Who.[12] In January 2006, readers of the British gay and lesbian newspaper The Pink Paper voted Tennant the "Sexiest Man in the Universe" over David Beckham and Brad Pitt.[13] A poll of over 10,000 women for the March 2006 issue of New Woman magazine ranked him 20th in their list of the "Top 100 Men".[14] In October 2006, Tennant was named as "Scotland's most stylish male" in the Scottish Style Awards.[15] He was named 'Coolest Man on TV' in 2007. He also won the National Television Awards award for Most Popular Actor in 2006 and 2007. A one woman show titled Not Stalking David Tennant has been written by Emma Hutchins and performed at several small venues in the London area. Personal lifeAccording to some tabloid reports, Tennant is currently single. He dated actress Sophia Myles, who appeared with him in the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" as Madame de Pompadour. They started dating after filming in October 2005.[16]. However in October 2007 Tennant was reported to have finished the relationship over the phone, blaming the lack of time the couple had spent together following Myles' move to LA.[17][18] [19] Tennant's previous girlfriends include actresses Anne Marie Duff, Keira Malik [20] and Natalie Walter. Tennant has a brother, Blair, and a sister, Karen. His mother, Helen McDonald, died on July 15, 2007.[21] Tennant traced his family tree in an episode of BBC One's popular genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, broadcast on 27 September 2006. His episode explored both his Scottish ancestry and that from Northern Ireland, against the backdrop of the Troubles in the latter. Tennant's maternal great-great-grandfather, James Blair, was a prominent Ulster Unionist member of Derry City Council after the partition of Ireland. Tennant displayed discomfort after learning of his great-great-grandfather's membership of the Orange Order.[22] The programme also revealed that Archie McLeod, the husband of Nellie Blair who once played with Derry City F.C., was Tennant's grandfather.[23] Tennant is now a member of the club's Exiles Supporters Club.[24] According to an interview in issue 375 of Doctor Who Magazine, Tennant drives a Škoda in which he was caught twice on the same day on the M4 for speeding while returning to London from Cardiff in October 2006.[25] Tennant is a supporter of the Labour Party and appeared in a Party political broadcast for them in 2005. List of creditsTelevision
Film
Radio and CD audio drama
Theatre
Awards
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