David Tennant
David Tennant a.k.a. 10th Doctor in the Doctor Who series. Also, few few other known or unknown facts.
Born: David John McDonald; 18 April 1971
Known Roles: Casanova (2005 TV serial); Barty Crouch, Jr (Harry Potter)
Early Life: Tennant was born David John McDonald on 18 April 1971 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 potential. He then earned a bachelor's degree from 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 a fan of 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, of the Pet Shop Boys which he found looking through a copy of Smash Hits Magazine. — because there was another David McDonald already on the books of the Equity union. His second choice for a stage name was David Brandon and his third choice was Chris McDonald.
Early Work: Tennant'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 an early television appearance as a transsexual barmaid in Rab C Nesbitt.
Tennant met comic actress and writer Arabella Weir during the making of the BBC's Takin' Over The Asylum in which they both appeared. When he moved to London shortly afterwards he lodged with her for five years and became godfather to her youngest child. 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. (He also appeared the Arkangel series as Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, as Edgar/Poor Tom in King Lear, and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, all in his natural accent.) It was announced in 2007 that he would return to the RSC as Hamlet and Berowne, for which see below.
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, wearing nothing but a police hat.
He appeared in the first episode of Reeves and Mortimer's re-vamped Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) in 2000, playing an eccentric artist. This is one of his few roles in his native Scottish accent.
During the Christmas season of 2002, Tennant also starred in a series of television commercials for Boots the Chemists.
Tennant appeared in several 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 Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect.
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