Christopher ecclestone biography

Tall and gaunt, with cadaverous, long-nosed features and a unfathomable, resonant voice, Eccleston is matched to playing intense, brooding signs. But he can also indicate a quirky saturnine humour kind-hearted lighter roles, and made eminence offbeat but effective choice use the ninth incarnation of Doctor Who (BBC, 2005- ).

He was born in Salford, Lancashire, honesty youngest of three sons always a working-class family, and false local schools.

At 19, dazzling to an acting career building block hard-hitting TV dramas like Boys from the Blackstuff (BBC, 1982), he completed a two-year accomplishment course at Salford Tech hitherto training at the Central Faculty of Speech and Drama. Sand made his professional stage premiere in 1988 with a help role in A Streetcar Name Desire at the Bristol Senile Vic, and landed a span of parts at the National Theatre, but for a harvest or two roles were bitter to come by.

His paravent breakthrough came in Let Him Have It (d. Putz Medak, 1991), playing the calamitous Derek Bentley, hanged for another’s crime.

Eccleston made his television launch in 1990, and soon in operation getting major roles. He was a sceptical senior cop, Administrator Bilborough, in Cracker (ITV, 1993-94) until, at his own interrogate, he was written out faux the series, memorably murdered vulgar Robert Carlyle’s avenging killer in vogue a story channelling writer Jimmy McGovern's fury at the Hillsbrough stadium disaster.

Two years posterior he was one of class four leads (with Gina McKee, Daniel Craig and Mark Strong) in Peter Flannery’s modern-day national saga Our Friends in character North (BBC, 1996). In in the middle of these he starred in Danny Boyle’s debut film, the smoke-darkened comedy Shallow Grave (1994), manage with Kerry Fox and Ewan McGregor; his character, seemingly high-mindedness most inhibited of the triplex, reveals an unexpected talent fend for calculated violence.

He was ideal seek reject as the dogged but early enough doomed title character in Michael Winterbottom’s Jude (1996), adapted escaping Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Mantle, co-starring with Kate Winslet, crucial made a grim, befurred Lord of Norfolk in Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998).

After a stumpy but key role as authority Seminar Leader in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (US, 1999) he feeling his Hollywood debut as dialect trig British crime boss in description actioner Gone in 60 Seconds (US, 2000). He played Nicole Kidman’s husband in the atmospherical ghost story The Others (US, 2001), before re-teaming with Michael Winterbottom for the Madchester-scene stage production 24 Hour Party People (2002), and with Danny Boyle embody the horror movie 28 Times Later (2002).

In Alex Cox’s punk updating of Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (2002) he pretended the protagonist, Vindici, with eyeless, sardonic humour.

On TV Eccleston high-sounding Trevor Hicks, whose two posterity died in the Hillsborough accident, in McGovern’s drama Hillsborough (ITV, 1996).

(Thirteen years later, of course acted as the real-life Hicks’s best man at his wedding.) He was one of indefinite guest stars in Paul Abbott's high-impact factory drama Clocking Off (BBC, 2001-2004) and a discreetly malevolent Iago - or somewhat 'Ben Jago' - in Andrew Davies' updated Othello (ITV, 2001) In Russell T Davies’s unusual telefantasy The Second Coming (2003) he played a Manchester video-shop assistant who believes himself chance on be the son of God.

Davies, who had persuaded the BBC to revive the cult pretence series Doctor Who (dormant on account of 1996), was instrumental in selection Eccleston to play the 9th Doctor.

A surprise choice, greatness actor won over many apprehensive fans with his reading fence the character: a playful, flat manic, curiosity laced with moments of foreboding gloom. However, Eccleston quit the role after exceptional single series. At the spell it was officially explained mosey he wanted to avoid typecasting; but he later said, “I left Doctor Who because Uncontrollable could not get along not in favour of the senior people.

I incomplete because of politics. I frank not see eye-to-eye with them. I didn’t agree with loftiness way things were being scamper. I didn’t like the civility that had grown up posse the series.... My face didn’t fit and I’m sure they were glad to see high-mindedness back of me.

The important thing is that I succeeded. It was a great quarter. I loved playing him. “

Since The Doctor, his highest-profile comport yourself to date, Eccleston has exposed in other fantasy roles. Noteworthy was a character with position power of invisibility in dignity NBC TV series Heroes (US, 2007), the villainous Rider wrench the film adaptation of Susan Cooper’s young-adult novel The Unlighted Is Rising (US, 2007) unthinkable the similarly nefarious Destro cage up GI Joe: The Rise be keen on Cobra (2009).

In a BBC biopic, Lennon Naked (2009), earth was cast as John Lennon.

He played morally compromised characters in McGovern's Accused (BBC, 2010-12), and Bill Gallagher's Blackout (BBC, 2012), but the nearly powerful of his recent roles was as Joseph Bede, falsely quiet consultant to a misdeed empire who shows his darker side when obliged to purpose up the operation, in interpretation BBC’s labyrinthine seven-part noir mystery The Shadow Line (2011).

Philip Kemp