Share on Facebook
50 things about "Best Doctor," David Tennant.
1. David Tennant was born as David John McDonald on 18 April 1971.
2. He is a Scottish actor.
3. David Tennant is 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 (2005) and Barty Crouch, Jr. in the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).
4. In addition to his appearances on screen, Tennant has worked as a voice actor and appeared in a critically acclaimed stage production of Hamlet.
5. In January 2015, Tennant received the National Television Award for Special Recognition.
6. David Tennant was born in Bathgate, West Lothian, to Essdale Helen (née McLeod; now deceased) and The Very Rev. Dr. Alexander McDonald.
7. David Tennant grew up with his brother Blair and sister Karen in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father was the local Church of Scotland Minister and former Moderator.
8. Tennant's maternal great-grandparents, William and Agnes Blair, were staunch Protestants from County Londonderry, Ulster, the northern province of Ireland, and were among the signatories of the Ulster Covenant in 1912. William Blair was a member of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.
9. Tennant's maternal grandfather, footballer Archie McLeod, met William and Agnes's daughter Nellie while playing for Derry City. McLeod's parents were from the Isle of Mull in the Scottish Highlands and are descended from tenant farmers
10. At the age of three, Tennant told his parents that he wanted to become an actor because he was a fan of Doctor Who, but they tried to encourage him to aim for more conventional work.
11. David Tennant watched almost every Doctor Who episode for years, and he spoke to Tom Baker at a book-signing event in Glasgow.
12. David Tennant says he was "absurdly single-minded" in pursuing an acting career.
13. David Tennant was educated at Ralston Primary and Paisley Grammar School. He acted in school productions throughout primary and secondary school.
14. David Tennant's talent at this young age was spotted by Scottish actress Edith MacArthur. After seeing young David's first performance at age 11, she told his parents he would become a successful stage actor.
15. David Tennant also attended Saturday classes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
16. At 16, he passed an audition for the Academy, one of their youngest students, and studied there between the ages of 17 and 20, taking his stage name from the Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant after reading a copy of Smash Hits magazine because there was another David McDonald already on the books of the Equity union.
17. David Tennant has stated that he later had to legally change his name to Tennant in order to meet Screen Actors Guild rules.
18. David Tennant made his professional acting debut while still in secondary school.
19. When he was 16, he acted in an anti-smoking film made by the Glasgow Health Board which aired on television and was also screened in schools. The following year, he played a role in an episode of Dramarama.
20. David Tennant's first professional role upon graduating from drama school was in a staging of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui costarring Ashley Jensen, one of a few plays in which he performed as part of the agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company.
21. David Tennant also made an early television appearance in the Scottish TV sitcom Rab C Nesbitt as a transsexual barmaid called Davina.
22. In the 1990s, Tennant appeared in several plays at the Dundee Repertory Theatre.
23. David Tennant's first major TV role was as the manic depressive Campbell in the Scottish drama series Takin' Over the Asylum (1994).
24. During filming, Tennant met comic actress and writer Arabella Weir. When he moved to London shortly afterwards, he lodged with Weir for five years and became godfather to her youngest child.
25. David Tennant has subsequently appeared with Weir in many productions: as a guest in her spoof television series Posh Nosh, in the Doctor Who audio drama Exile (during which Weir played an alternate version of the Doctor), and as panellists on the West Wing Ultimate Quiz on More4 (Weir later guest-starred on Doctor Who itself after Tennant left the series).
26. One of his earliest big-screen roles was in Jude (1996), in which he shared a scene with Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect. Coincidentally, Eccleston portrayed the incarnation of The Doctor, immediately preceding Tennant's.
27. David Tennant developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
28. His first Shakespearean role for the RSC was in As You Like It (1996); having auditioned for the role of Orlando, the romantic lead, he was instead cast as the jester Touchstone, which he played in his natural Scottish accent.
29. David Tennant subsequently specialised in comic roles, playing Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors and Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals, although he also played the tragic role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.
30. David Tennant contributed to several audio dramatisations of Shakespeare for the Arkangel Shakespeare series (1998).
31. His roles include a reprisal of his Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, as well as Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, Edgar/Poor Tom in King Lear, and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, all of which he performs in his natural accent.
32. In 1995, Tennant appeared at the Royal National Theatre, London, playing the role of Nicholas Beckett in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw.
33. In television, Tennant appeared in the first episode of Reeves and Mortimer's revamped Randall and Hopkirk in 2000, playing an eccentric artist. This is one of his few TV roles in his native Scottish accent.
34. During the Christmas season of 2002, he starred in a series of television advertisements for Boots the Chemists.
35. David Tennant began to appear on television more prominently in 2004 and 2005, when he appeared in a dramatisation of He Knew He Was Right (2004), Blackpool (2004), Casanova (2005), and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). In film, he appeared in Bright Young Things (2003), and later that same year appeared as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
36. Doctor Who returned to British screens in 2005, with Christopher Eccleston playing the role of the Ninth Doctor in the first series. Tennant replaced him as of the second series, making his first, brief appearance as the Tenth Doctor in the episode "The Parting of the Ways" (2005) at the end of the regeneration scene, and also appeared in a special 7-minute mini-episode shown as part of the 2005 Children in Need appeal, broadcast on 18 November 2005.
37. He began filming the new series of Doctor Who in late July 2005. His first full-length outing as the Doctor was a 60-minute special, "The Christmas Invasion", first broadcast on Christmas Day 2005.
38. David Tennant had been formally offered the role of the Doctor during rehearsals for The Quatermass Experiment.
39. Tennant has expressed enthusiasm about fulfilling his childhood dream. He remarked in a radio interview: "Who wouldn't want to be the Doctor? I've even got my own TARDIS!"
40. In 2006, readers of Doctor Who Magazine voted Tennant "Best Doctor" over perennial favorite Tom Baker.
41. In 2007, Tennant's Doctor was voted the "coolest character on UK television" in a Radio Times survey.
42. When Tennant was cast as Eccleston's successor, he had wanted to use his native Scottish accent and become "the first kilted Doctor" according to an interview in the Daily Star, but writer Russell T Davies did not want the Doctor's accent "touring the regions", so he used Estuary English instead.
43. Tennant was able to use his Scottish accent during his time on the series, however, when the Doctor briefly masquerades as "Dr Jamie McCrimmon" of Edinburgh in Tooth and Claw - a nod to the Second Doctor's companion.
44. From 2005 to 2007, Tennant dated actress Sophia Myles, with whom he acted in Foyle's War and the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace".
45. David Tennant married actress Georgia Moffett on 30 December 2011, having met her when they co-starred in the Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Daughter".
46. The couple has three children, including Moffett's child from a previous relationship whom Tennant adopted.
47. David Tennant does not discuss his personal life or relationships in interviews, stating in 2009 that "relationships are hard enough with the people you're having them with, let alone talking about them in public".
48. He believes that religion "must have" shaped his character, and he is an occasional churchgoer.
49. In 2008, Tennant was voted "Greenest Star on the Planet" in an online vote held by Playhouse Disney as part of the Playing for the Planet Awards.
50. In October 2006, he was named "Scotland's most stylish male" in the Scottish Style Awards.
Source: Wikipedia.org
