John Barrowman
John Barrowman
John Scot Barrowman, MBE, is a Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, presenter and writer who holds both British and American citizenship. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he emigrated to the United States with his family in 1975. Encouraged by his high school teachers, Barrowman studied performing arts at the United States International University in San Diego before landing the role of Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes at London's West End...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth11 March 1967
CountryUnited States of America
I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about 'the character,' and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.
When I was a kid growing up in the States in the late '70s and early '80s, as soon as 'Dallas' came on on a Friday night on CBS at 9 P.M., we stopped everything from that moment on as a family.
I'm really passionate about pantomime because it is often the first introduction for a child to theatre, and if that child has a great experience at a pantomime they will continue to come year after year.
When I was younger I wanted to be an airline pilot, but that lasted for about 30 seconds.
I have a real passion for driving. Earlier on in my life I wanted to be a race car driver. But I don't pay an extortionate amount of money for cars. I'm pretty frugal.
Whenever I'm in Glasgow I go and stand outside the front of the house I grew up in, which is in Mount Vernon.
It's taken me 30 years to get this way, and I don't intend to let go. I work hard, but I play hard, too, and that's the one part of me that nobody sees. But I intend to be around for a long time yet.
When I go to Florida for Christmas I always take my nieces and nephews out on excursions, ... I become like a big kid again. We go on all the big rides at the theme parks or I stick them in go-karts where their feet can't quite reach the pedals. I think that if you can continue to have the child at heart you may grow old physically but you will stay young mentally.
I did archery when I was in high school. In our gym class we had two weeks of archery, and I remember taking the bow and arrow and firing it up and across the street into a car parking lot.
The one thing that makes 'Torchwood' work so brilliantly and makes it a little bit above the rest of all other sci-fi dramas out there is that we have a sense of humour.
For some reason I seem to be a massive hit with middle-aged women. I seriously don't know what it is.
You can be in the public eye all the time and still have a private life, but the important thing is to keep in touch with the people who put you there.
We get the scripts before the table read, but I don't look at them until we go into the table read. I don't want to know, when I'm playing a moment in the current episode, what's going to happen because it might change how I'm playing that.
I'm not one of those actors who likes to analyze things too much, so I trust what the writers are doing with the characters, in order to give them their journey. My job is to come in and try to make those words on the page come alive on camera.