David Tennant
David Tennant
David Tennantis a Scottish actor known for his roles as the Tenth Doctor in the British television series Doctor Who, Alec Hardy in Broadchurch, Giacomo Casanova in the TV serial Casanova, Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, and Barty Crouch, Jr. in the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In addition to his appearances on screen, he has worked as a voice actor and in theatre, including a critically acclaimed stage production of Hamlet. In January 2015, Tennant received the...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth18 April 1971
CityBathgate, Scotland
David Tennant quotes about
Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It's not the time that matters, it's the person.
I've always been a geek and slightly awkward… slightly umm… I was never the cool kid at school.
And the very fact of how you speak somehow influences who you are. The way you move, the way you think, it seeps into your being, and it's quite hard to really break that down entirely.
Getting the call to be in The Goblet of Fire was like being welcomed into the most exclusive upper circle of some elite actors' club. You sit on set with the cream of the National Theatre and the RSC, all clutching wands or wearing witches' hats.
I think doing different accents is part of the job of acting really. It's something else that I quite enjoy the challenge of, to be honest.
I mean, you know, while I'm acting on stage I'm ranking quite high, but in a room with Barack Obama I'm probably into negative digits. I never feel very famous...
All roads seem to have come back to Doctor Who in our life. But, no, it was a huge part of my growing up. I was a massive fan and it certainly inspired me to get into acting and to be ... one of those people that tells stories on TV. That was a huge part of my childhood.
I was always going to act, literally ever since I was tiny. In fact, I have Doctor Who to thank for that. I wanted to become an actor after being obsessed with Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor Who, in the 1970s. His was the definitive performance of all time in anything.
I'm quite happy to leave it still feeling that way, leave it before it starts feeling like a job. ... I have such fond memories of watching 'Doctor Who' when I was a kid and growing up, that if I've left anybody anywhere with memories as fond, then I feel like I've done my job.
To have someone who's got a strong individual voice that is allowed to be heard is quite increasingly rare. These people need to be cherished.
I love characters who are clever and smart, and you have to run to catch up with. I think there's something very appealing and rather heroic in that.
We seem to spend a lot of our time in very small spaces spouting a lot of dialogue very quickly.
If you speak in a different accent, you begin to move in a slightly different way. You think in a slightly different way. I think it's part of trying to find what makes a character.
An accent, obviously, it's to do with the way your mouth works and the sounds that come out of your head, but somehow it informs everything about you, I think.