Peter Capaldi
Peter Capaldi
Peter Dougan Capaldiis a Scottish actor, writer and director, best known for being the twelfth and current actor to play the title role in the long-running BBC One sci-fi series Doctor Who. He has played numerous roles in film and television including the role of Malcolm Tucker, a spin doctor in the BBC comedy series The Thick of It and its film spinoff In the Loop, for which he has received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning Best Male...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth14 April 1958
CityGlasgow, Scotland
STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow's rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future.
It was great being brought up in a Glasgow working-class tenement. It wasn't miserable, and it wasn't poverty stricken. It felt very safe, full of delights.
It seems to me that most things that are being made are designed for young people. There aren't that many depictions of melancholic older people, even though they form a growing proportion of the population.
It's one thing getting the job of Doctor Who, which is wonderful. And then the next thing they say to you is, 'We're going to announce it live on television!' And you think, 'That's not exactly what I thought I was signing up for!'
I wake up in the morning, and I go, 'I'm Doctor Who! I'm playing Doctor Who. I'm Doctor Who.'
I've had very bleak experiences in hospitals, but they were also sometimes very funny.
I turn down invitations to events where I know there will be politicians.
I knew Richard E. Grant, and I went to him and said "Would you like to [play Kafka in the film]?" and he said yeah, and then suddenly I had all these people who were happy to come along. We got a little bit of money from Scottish Screen to pay for it. I got so many favors because I knew people in the business. I was in a remarkably good position. I got so many favors from people. I got the Monty Python technical people.
I found American actors quite scary because they're brilliant actors and brilliantly funny, and they never stopped once you wound them up... off they went and they just deliver fantastic stuff.
We had our British background of traditional theatre behind us.
My family has to be very patient living with me, if you're playing a part that's not you. You have to get it right.
I'm a huge fan of The Sopranos, and suddenly, you find yourself going one-to-one with this guy who you've been watching for years, watching every flicker in his eye and every detail on his face.
One of the problems with episodic television of any color is that everything has got to be okay at the end of the episode so it can start again next week. So the events that occur are rarely life-changing. But with film, you can say that this thing only happened once; this is a major thing that happened to these people.
Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.