John Noble
John Noble
John Nobleis an Australian actor and theatre director of more than 80 plays. He is best known for his roles as Dr. Walter Bishop in the American Fox science fiction television series Fringe, and Henry Parrish in the Fox action-horror series Sleepy Hollow. His most high-profile film role was as Denethor in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He also provided the voice of the DC Comics supervillain Scarecrow in the 2015 video game Batman: Arkham Knight, where...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth20 August 1948
CountryAustralia
We often get pigeon-holed as a tough guy, or whatever else. I've been pigeon-holed as a heavy and serious, and almost a baddy, but not quite a baddy, over the years of my work in television, particularly.
I'd never done anything that required a five-year commitment. To build a show that seems to have kept the imagination of the world so much was a bit otherworldly.
I have a very special love for all of those actors [in Fringe] and I'll miss them.Over the five years, we were given the chance to develop some pretty close bonds, both with our characters and personally, and we did.
I remember when I read Walter, for example, six years ago now, I said, "This is the role for me." I said that to my family. There was something there that I knew was absolutely right, and that was just based on the character. That's when gut instinct comes into play. I know there are certain things I won't do.
'Lord Of The Rings' fandom was massive, worldwide, entrenched. Generally it had been part of the fans' life all their life, because they had it read to them as children; they'd become Tolkien students.
I love having played Walter because I suppose any actor brings a certain aspect of their own personality to their work, and I had a fairly broad canvas to paint on with the different versions.
I don't know where the line is. I don't know how much of myself is in Walter. There's got to be a bit of him there.
I find science really sexy and, at the time that I was a school kid, it certainly wasn't.
I always loved the challenge. When something new happened, I always used to get quite excited.
We didn't know until really quite late in the piece how Joel [Wyman] would finish it off.
I've played a bunch of different versions of Walter [from Fringe].I loved it when he was being random, which was probably the original version of him, more than anyone else. I loved doing Walter then, and all of the different mental states that we've played.
I'm a character actor, so as a character actor, I'm always looking for something interesting.
A lot of the times, roles are chosen for us.
I'm truly grateful to the writers of Fringe for giving me that because, over the years, when I've spoken about the character with them, I've always felt that this would be the perfect way to end and complete his journey, and to complete the journey of this series, and they gave it to me.