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Christopher Eccleston Biography |
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Christopher Eccleston (born on February 16 1964) is an England theatre, television and film actor, best known as the Ninth Doctor of Doctor (Doctor Who) in Doctor Who and other work in television, and for his roles in several high-profile low-budget films. /b> Early life Eccleston was born in in Salford, Lancashire and he enjoyed a happy working-class upbringing. He considered himself to have been a "poor student" with a love of television with an ambition was to play football for his beloved Manchester United F.C.. However, at the age of 19, he found himself to be a much better actor than he was a footballer, and inspired by television dramas such as Boys from the Blackstuff, he took to acting as his profession. Eccleston trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. As an actor, his early influences had been Ken Loach's Kes and Albert Finney's performance in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, but he soon found himself interpreting the classics, performing the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Molière. At the age of 25, Eccleston made his professional stage debut in the Bristol Old Vic's production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Relatively unemployed as an actor for some years after his graduation, Eccleston took a variety of odd jobs at a supermarket, on building sites, and as an artist's model. Career Early appearances Eccleston first came to public attention as Derek Bentley in the 1991 film Let Him Have It, based on true events. However, it was a regular role in the TV series Cracker (British television) (1993–94) — culminating in his character's dramatic death in the second series — that made him a recognisable figure in the UK. He appeared in the low-budget Danny Boyle film Shallow Grave in 1994, in which he co-starred with the up-and-coming Ewan McGregor. The same year, he won the part of Nicky Hutchinson in the epic BBC drama serial Our Friends in the North, and it was the transmission of this production on BBC Two in 1996 that perhaps really made him into a household name in the UK. His film career has since taken off with a variety of high-profile but not — except in one or two cases — major roles, including parts in Jude (film) (1996), Elizabeth (movie) (1998), eXistenZ (1999), Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000 movie) (2000), The Others (2001 film) (2001), 24 Hour Party People (2002) and another Danny Boyle film, the horror movie 28 Days Later (2002). He did play a major role as the protagonist of Alex Cox's 2002 Revengers Tragedy, adapted from Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy of the same name. He has starred alongside two major Hollywood actresses in smaller independent movies, playing opposite Renée Zellweger in A Price Above Rubies (1998) and Cameron Diaz in The Invisible Circus (2001). Despite starring in the car-heist movie Gone in 60 Seconds, he did not actually take his driving test until January 2004 and is only licenced to drive automatic transmission cars. Despite his successful film career, he has continued to appear in a variety of television roles, racking up credits in British television dramas of recent years. These have included Hearts and Minds (1995) for Channel 4, Clocking Off (2000) and Flesh and Blood (2002) for the BBC and Hillsborough disaster#"Hillsborough" television drama (1996), a modern version of Othello#Movie and Opera versions (2002), playing 'Ben Jago', (the Iago character) and the religious telefantasy epic The Second Coming (TV) (2003, for ITV, playing Steve Baxter, the son of God, a role which some found ironic as Eccleston is an atheist). He also finds time for the occasional light-hearted role, however, as his guest appearances in episodes of the comedy drama Linda Green (2001) and macabre sketch show The League of Gentlemen (television series) (2002) have shown. On stage, his highest-profile production has been his starring role in Hamlet at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 2002. The West Yorkshire Playhouse is a favourite venue of his, and he most recently returned there in the new play Electricity, which ran in March and April 2004. A very highly-regarded actor, Eccleston has twice been nominated in the Best Actor category at the British Academy Television Awards, the UK's premier television awards ceremony. His first nomination came in 1997 for Our Friends in the North, when he lost out to Nigel Hawthorne (for The Fragile Heart), and he was nominated again in 2004 for The Second Coming (TV), this time being beaten by Bill Nighy (for State of Play). He did, however, triumph in the Best Actor categories at the 1997 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards and the Royal Television Society Awards, winning for Our Friends in the North. He won the RTS Best Actor award for a second time in 2003, this time for his performance in Flesh and Blood. In 2005 he received the Most Popular Actor award in the National Television Awards for Doctor Who. In July 2004 a poll of industry experts, conducted by Radio Times magazine, voted Eccleston the 19th Most Powerful Person in Television Drama. Doctor Who On March 20 2004 it was announced that Eccleston was to play the Ninth Doctor of Doctor (Doctor Who) in the revival of the legendary BBC science fiction on television series Doctor Who, which started airing in March 2005. The series executive producer and writer Russell T. Davies has said that Eccleston was always the first choice for the part. Despite this, the United Kingdom tabloid press ran reports that Bill Nighy had been offered the role first, but declined (and in the 2005 documentary series Doctor Who Confidential, Davies said that he "wouldn't have thought Chris Eccleston would be interested"). Eccleston was the first actor to play the Doctor on television in nine years (since Paul McGann in 1996) and the first actor to play the Doctor in an on-going series in seventeen years (since Sylvester McCoy in 1989). He was also the first actor to play the Doctor who was actually born after the start of the original television series; he was born two weeks after the famous The Daleks was first broadcast in the UK. The new series of Doctor Who premiered on March 26, 2005. The show received praise for its opening story and its special effects. Given the very high ratings, the BBC immediately announced that Doctor Who would be renewed for two more series and two Christmas specials. However, on March 30, 2005, the BBC released a statement, ostensibly from Eccleston, saying that he had decided to leave the role after just one series/season, owing to fears that he would become Typecasting (acting). On April 4, the BBC revealed that Eccleston's "statement" had been falsely attributed and released without his consent. The BBC admitted that they had broken an agreement made in January not to disclose publicly the fact that he only intended to do one season. The statement had been made after journalists made queries to the press office.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4410943.stm Eccleston's three-month tenure makes him either the shortest or second-shortest serving Doctor to date, depending on how one counts Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor. (McGann appeared once but was not "replaced" for nine years on screen as no Doctor Who series was ever made at that time. Eccleston appeared in the role thirteen times but his successor appeared at the end of his final episode, David Tennant taking over at the conclusion of The Parting of the Ways.) On June 11 2005 during a BBC radio interview, when asked if he had enjoyed working on Doctor Who, Eccleston responded by saying, "Mixed, but that's a long story." Eccleston's reasons for leaving the part continue to be a subject of discussion in Britain's newspapers: on October 4, 2005 Alan Davies told The Daily Telegraph that Eccleston had been "overworked" by the BBC, and had left the role because he was "exhausted" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/10/04/bvalan04.xml. Ten days later, Eccleston told The Daily Mirror this was not true, and expressed some irritation at Davies for his comments http://www.mirror.co.uk/tvandfilm/tvland/tm_objectid=16247775%26method=full%26siteid=94762-name_page.html. Despite his short and eventful tenure, Eccleston's performance had a lasting effect on Doctor Who. Eccleston was voted "Most Popular Actor" at the 2005 National Television Awards for his portrayal of the Doctor. After the Doctor 's company Cougar Films. On 30 October 2005, Eccleston appeared on stage at the Old Vic theatre in London in the one-night play Night Sky alongside Navin Chowdhry, Bruno Langley, David Warner (actor), Saffron Burrows and David Baddiel. In December 2005, Eccleston traveled to Indonesia's Aceh province for the Breakfast (television programme) news programme, examining how survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake were rebuilding their lives http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/4524226.stm. On 20 December 2005, it was announced that Eccleston would lead the cast as playwright, poet and spy Christopher Marlowe in Peter Whelan’s The School of Night. Directed by Bill Alexander, The School of Night was due to preview from 16 February 2006, but on 6 January the production was cancelled without a full explanation. In May 2006, Eccleston appeared as the narrator in a production of Romeo and Juliet at The Lowry theatre in his home city of Salford. The theatre company with which he performed, Celebrity Pig (of which he is patron), is made up of learning disabled actors. Later in 2006 he will star in Perfect Parents, an ITV drama written and directed by Joe Ahearne.http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/12208/eccleston-swaps-time-for-crime-in-first Christopher Eccleston was considered for the roles of Scarecrow (comics) in Batman Begins movie and Joker (comics) in its sequel, The Dark Knight (film). http://www.jokeronfilm.com/candidates1.html In May 2006 it was reported that Eccleston was in advanced negotiations to star in a Sky One revival of the seminal 1960s drama series "The Prisoner", as Number Six (The Prisoner), the character originally played by series creator Patrick McGoohan. Eccleston's agent has since categorically denied these rumours http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4972194.stm. In August, 2006, Eccleston starred in New Orleans, Mon Amour with Elisabeth Moss. The film was directed by Michael Almereyda, and shot in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Filmography { , Mark Gatiss, Robert Shearman, Paul Cornell and Steven Moffat - Proof , based on the play by William Shakespeare DVD was released in May 2006. and Brian Hill (Various Characters) (2005) Theatre Selected awards and nominations Film & television 
Courtesy of: http://www.wikipedia.org/ |
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