Actors who played the Doctor on Doctor Who that has passed away
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- William Hartnell was born on 8 January 1908, just south of St. Pancras railway station in London. In press materials in the 1940s he claimed that his father was a farmer and later a stockbroker; it turns out that he had actually been born out of wedlock, as his biography "Who's There?" states.
At age 16 he was adopted by Hugh Blaker, a well-known art connoisseur, who helped him to get a job with Sir Frank Benson's Shakespearean Company. He started as a general dogsbody--call-boy, assistant stage manager, property master and assistant lighting director--but was occasionally allowed to play small walk-on parts. Two years later he left Benson's group and went off on tour, working for a number of different theatre companies about Britain. He became known as an actor of farce and understudied renowned performers such as Lawrence Grossmith, Ernest Truex, Bud Flanagan and Charles Heslop. He played repertory in Richmond, Harrogate, Leeds and Sheffield and had a successful run as the lead in a touring production of "Charley's Aunt." He also toured Canada in 1928-29, acquiring much valuable experience.
On his return to England, Hartnell married actress Heather McIntyre. He starred in such films as I'm an Explosive (1933), The Way Ahead (1944), Strawberry Roan (1944), The Agitator (1945), Query (1945) and Appointment with Crime (1946).
His memorable performance on the television series The Army Game (1957) and the movie This Sporting Life (1963) led to him being cast as the Doctor on Doctor Who (1963), for which he is best remembered. His son-in-law is agent Terry Carney. His granddaughter is Jessica Carney (real name Judith Carney), who authored a biography of her grandfather, "Who's There?", in 1996.1st Doctor, 1963-1966, 1972-1973 (January 8, 1908 - April 23, 1975) - Actor
- Additional Crew
A gaunt, intense character actor of striking presence, Richard Gibbon Hurndall was educated at Scarborough College and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He acted professionally from 1930, initially in repertory theatre and later with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, his roles including Orlando in "As You Like It", Bassanio in "The Merchant of Venice" and Laertes in "Hamlet". Richard's powerful voice and precise diction were also perfectly suited to working in radio. Between 1949 and 1952, he was a member of the BBC radio drama repertory company. In October 1958, he took over as host of Radio Luxemburg's half-hour British version of Edward R. Murrow's "This I Believe". A year later, he was well cast as Sherlock Holmes in a BBC radio adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sign of Four", transmitted over five weekly episodes.
From 1946, Hurndall made sporadic television appearances, but did not fully take to the medium until the mid 1960's. His incisive personality, combined with a natural ability to adopt diverse accents and dialects, led to him being cast as doctors, magistrates, aristocrats, and other authority figures of various ethnic backgrounds. By contrast, he was equally effective as a debonair underworld figure, Henry Mackleson, in Spindoe (1968). On the humorous side, he essayed a campy, effete antiques dealer in an episode of Steptoe and Son (1962) ("Any Old Iron?"); and alternated being sinister and droll, as Carne, a German general masterminding a rather unusual invasion of a Cornish fishing village at the onset of World War I, in the hilariously funny Ripping Yarns (1976) adventure, "Whinfrey's Last Case" .
His best known role was also destined to be one of his last. On the strength of his appearance in an episode of Blake's 7 (1978), Hurndall was cast as the First Doctor (formerly played by the late William Hartnell) in the 1983 feature length Doctor Who (1963) reunion special The Five Doctors (1983). The series' continuity adviser, Ian Levine, had spotted a resemblance between the two actors, an opinion with which Hartnell's widow apparently concurred. By his own admission, Hurndall entered the project with a measure of ambiguity, having had limited exposure to science fiction, or Doctor Who (1963), for that matter. Ultimately, he conformed perfectly to Hartnell's precise idiosyncratic mannerisms and intonation - a performance which proved more than adequate to the original. Sadly, Hurndall died within a few months of The Five Doctors (1983) going to air.1st Doctor, 1983 (November 3, 1910 - April 13, 1984)- Patrick Troughton was born in Mill Hill, London and was educated at Mill Hill School. He trained as an actor at the Embassy School of Acting in the UK and at Leighton Rollin's Studio for for Actors at Long Island, New York in the USA. During World War II he served in the Royal Navy and after the war ended he joined the Old Vic and became a Shakespearean actor. He won his most famous role as the second Doctor in Doctor Who (1963), in 1966 and played the role for three years. His hobbies included golf, sailing and fishing. He was a father of six (David, Jane, Joanna, Mark, Michael and Peter), a stepfather to Gill and Graham and a grandfather to Harry Melling, Jamie and Sam Troughton.2nd Doctor, 1966-1969, 1972-1973, 1983, 1985 (March 25, 1920 - March 28, 1987)
- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
Jon Pertwee is best known for his portrayal of the Third Doctor on the BBC's science-fiction television series Doctor Who (1963) from 1970 to 1974. He was also the first to play the role following the transition of BBC One from black and white to colour. His 60-year entertainment career included work in radio, films and cabaret. This was despite the inauspicious beginning of having been thrown out of drama school as a young man and told he had no future as an actor.
Jon Pertwee was born John (after the apostle and disciple) Devon (after the county) Roland (after his father) Pertwee (an Anglicised version of the true family name, Perthuis de Laillevault) on 7 July 1919 in the Chelsea area of London. He was the second son of famous playwright, painter and actor Roland Pertwee, and his actress wife Avice - his writer brother Michael Pertwee being three years his senior. The Pertwee family had a long connection with show business and the performing arts, and it was at Wellington House preparatory school in Westgate-On-Sea in Kent that Jon, as a small and rebellious child, was encouraged in that direction. Later, at Frensham Heights co-educational school, Jon had his first taste of "real" theatre with real women in the school stage productions of "Twelfth Night" and "Lady Princess Stream". In 1936 he auditioned for, and was accepted by, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). He was later kicked out for refusing to play the part of the wind in a play.
Jon Pertwee died on 20 May 1996 of a heart attack. The BBC announced his death. He was survived by his wife Ingeborg Rhoesa, his son Sean Pertwee, a popular and talented actor, and his daughter Dariel Pertwee, an accomplished stage actress.3rd Doctor, 1970-1974, 1983 (July 7, 1919 - May 20, 1996)- Actor
- Soundtrack
One of stage, screen and TV's finest transatlantic talents, slight, gravel-voiced, pasty-looking John Vincent Hurt was born on January 22, 1940, in Shirebrook, a coal mining village, in Derbyshire, England. The youngest child of Phyllis (Massey), an engineer and one-time actress, and Reverend Arnould Herbert Hurt, an Anglican clergyman and mathematician, his quiet shyness betrayed an early passion for acting. First enrolled at the Grimsby Art School and St. Martin's School of Art, his focus invariably turned from painting to acting.
Accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1960, John made his stage debut in "Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger" followed by "The Dwarfs." Elsewhere, he continued to build upon his 60's theatrical career with theatre roles in "Chips with Everything" at the Vaudeville, the title role in "Hamp" at the Edinburgh Festival, "Inadmissible Evidence" at Wyndham's and "Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs" at the Garrick. His movie debut occurred that same year with a supporting role in the "angry young man" British drama Young and Willing (1962), followed by small roles in Appuntamento in Riviera (1962), A Man for All Seasons (1966) and The Sailor from Gibraltar (1967).
A somber, freckled, ravaged-looking gent, Hurt found his more compelling early work in offbeat theatrical characterizations with notable roles such as Malcolm in "Macbeth" (1967), Octavius in "Man and Superman" (1969), Peter in "Ride a Cock Horse" (1972), Mike in '"The Caretaker" (1972) and Ben in "The Dumb Waiter" (1973). At the same time he gained more prominence in a spray of film and support roles such as a junior officer in Before Winter Comes (1968), the title highwayman in Sinful Davey (1969), a morose little brother in In Search of Gregory (1969), a dim, murderous truck driver in 10 Rillington Place (1971), a skirt-chasing, penguin-studying biologist in Cry of the Penguins (1971), the unappetizing son of a baron in The Pied Piper (1972) and a repeat of his title stage role as Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (1974).
Hurt shot to international stardom, however, on TV where he was allowed to display his true, fearless range. He reaped widespread acclaim for his embodiment of the tormented gay writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp in the landmark television play The Naked Civil Servant (1975), adapted from Crisp's autobiography. Hurt's bold, unabashed approach on the flamboyant and controversial gent who dared to be different was rewarded with the BAFTA (British TV Award). This triumph led to the equally fascinating success as the cruel and crazed Roman emperor Caligula in the epic television masterpiece I, Claudius (1976), followed by another compelling interpretation as murderous student Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1979).
A resurgence occurred on film as a result. Among other unsurpassed portraits on his unique pallet, the chameleon in him displayed a polar side as the gentle, pathetically disfigured title role in The Elephant Man (1980), and as a tortured Turkish prison inmate who befriends Brad Davis in the intense drama Midnight Express (1978) earning Oscar nominations for both. Mainstream box-office films were offered as well as art films. He made the most of his role as a crew member whose body becomes host to an unearthly predator in Alien (1979). With this new rush of fame came a few misguided ventures as well that were generally unworthy of his talent. Such brilliant work as his steeple chase jockey in Champions (1984) or kidnapper in The Hit (1984) was occasionally offset by such drivel as the comedy misfire Partners (1982) with Ryan O'Neal in which Hurt looked enervated and embarrassed. For the most part, the craggy-faced actor continued to draw extraordinary notices. Tops on the list includes his prurient governmental gadfly who triggers the Christine Keeler political sex scandal in the aptly-titled Scandal (1989); the cultivated gay writer aroused and obsessed with struggling "pretty-boy" actor Jason Priestley in Love and Death on Long Island (1997); and the Catholic priest embroiled in the Rwanda atrocities in Shooting Dogs (2005).
Latter parts of memorable interpretations included Dr. Iannis in Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), the recurring role of the benign wand-maker Mr. Ollivander in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), the tyrannical dictator Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta (2005) and the voice of The Dragon in Merlin (2008). Among Hurt's final film appearances were as a terminally ill screenwriter in That Good Night (2017) and a lesser role in the mystery thriller Damascus Cover (2017). Hurt's voice was also tapped into animated features and documentaries, often serving as narrator. He also returned to the theatre performing in such shows as "The Seagull", "A Month in the Country" (1994), "Afterplay" (2002) and "Krapp's Last Tape", the latter for which he received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.
A recovered alcoholic who married four times, Hurt was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the Queen in 2004, and Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in 2015. That same year (2015) he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In July of 2016, he was forced to bow out of the father role of Billy Rice in a then-upcoming London stage production of "The Entertainer" opposite Kenneth Branagh due to ill health that he described as an "intestinal ailment". Hurt died several months later at his home in Cromer, Norfolk, England on January 15, 2017, three days after his 77th birthday.War Doctor, 2013 (January 22, 1940 - January 25, 2017)- Actor
- Soundtrack
Michael was born in Nottingham where he was educated at Becket Roman Catholic Grammar School, West Bridgeford in Nottingham where he was known as Jimmy - his real name is Michael James - and where he was caned some 130 times. While that might have been a record, the one that went into the record books was scoring 60 of the under-13 football team's 120 goals in a season. In between canings and scoring goals, he acquired a great love of literature and the English language from a teacher at Becket Grammar School which he left at 17 with an A level in philosophy and became an accountant with the coal board. Before he took his accountancy finals, he left the Coal Board and went to work in the Nottingham Fish Market where the language he learned was a revelation to him.The Valeyard, 1986 (October 29, 1935 - February 5, 2024)