Paul McGann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul McGann
Born	November 14, 1959 (age 47) Surrey, England
Official site	The McGann Brothers official website
Notable roles	Marwood (Withnail and I) The Doctor (Doctor Who)

Paul McGann (born November 14, 1959 in Surrey) is an English actor who made his name on the BBC serial The Monocled Mutineer, in which he played the lead role. He is also known for his role in Withnail and I, and for portraying the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie and subsequent tie-in media.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Childhood 1.2 Personal life 2 Career 2.1 Early appearances 2.1.1 The Monocled Mutineer 2.1.2 Film career 2.2 Doctor Who (1996 television movie) 2.3 After Doctor Who 3 Trivia 4 Filmography 5 Television 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Childhood

Paul McGann was born in Surrey, England in 1959. When he was very young, his family relocated to Liverpool where he was raised. He born into a rather large Roman Catholic family, who encouraged him and his siblings, and a young age, to develop their talents and gifts. McGann's talents were further refined when he attended grammar school in Liverpool. Being so impressed by his dramatic abilities, one of McGann's teachers advised him to enter the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and to pursue a career as an actor. Acting on his teacher's advice, McGann did enroll in the Royal Academy and after he left the institute, he formed a successful acting career spanning over two decades.

Paul McGann is the third of six children born in the McGann family. His mother, Claire McGann, had two twin boys, Joseph and John, who were born in 1957, but John died shortly after birth. Paul McGann has three younger siblings: Mark (born in 1961), Stephen (born in 1963) and Claire McGann (born in 1965). All three of his brothers are also actors and the four of them starred together (as four brothers) in the 1995 television TV serial The Hanging Gale about the Irish Famine. They also formed the pop quartet The McGanns, releasing the single "Everything But The Boy". McGann's sister, Claire, is a programme finance manager for TV channel Five.

[edit] Personal life

McGann is known for keeping his romantic and personal life out of the media. However, he has not always been successful in his privacy attempts. In 1992, McGann married Annie Milner, with whom he has two sons, Joe McGann (born in 1989) and Jake McGann (born in 1991).

In 1994, McGann met Catherine Zeta-Jones while filming the miniseries Catherine the Great. Zeta-Jones became a friend of McGann and his family. When paparazzi took a photograph of McGann and Zeta-Jones on a London street, the two became the subject of gossip in the British tabloids, much to the distress of McGann and Milner. McGann and Zeta-Jones have both stated that they have never been romantically linked, except in the imaginations of tabloid reporters. ^[1]

In 2006, McGann and his wife separated, and he began a relationship with the actress Susannah Harker.^[2]

[edit] Career

[edit] Early appearances

[edit] The Monocled Mutineer

McGann's first major role was the infamous British deserter and criminal Percy Toplis in the 1986 BBC serial The Monocled Mutineer. The film was based on the 1978 book of the same name, which was written by William Alison and John Fairley.

Although McGann received praises for his dramatic performance, the drama was never re-broadcast on the BBC. This is because the BBC came under fire from the Conservative Government due to the sensitivity of the subject matter of the Étaples Mutiny at "The Bull Ring", a harsh British Army training ground in Etaples, France. The events that transpired at the Bull Ring remain debated, and documents concerning the occurrences there will remain sealed until 2017. They claimed that the film was inaccurate and displayed a "Left-wing bias". Toplis was a mysterious figure and the film, as well as the book, depicted him as an active participant of the Etaples Mutiny, before he was tracked down and killed some years after the end of World War I. As a result, a minor political crisis in Britain was launched which prompted the BBC to remove all planned repeat screenings of the film. Despite the banning controversy, The Monocled Mutineer was released by the BBC on video in the early 1990s, but as of 2007 it has yet to be released on DVD.

[edit] Film career

Following on from that part of Percy Topliss, McGann sought to a less controversial and more comedic role for his next project. In 1987, he was cast as the eponymous "I" in Bruce Robinson's cult film comedy, Withnail and I. He also starred as Anton Skrebensky in Ken Russell's 1989 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow. McGann's other early film appearances include The Monk, Dealers, Tree of Hands and the epic war film Empire of the Sun.

Since 1989, McGann has concentrated primarily on television work, including Nice Town and Nature Boy for the BBC, and The One That Got Away and the second series of Hornblower for ITV. However, he has had small roles in a number of high-profile American films like Alien³ and The Three Musketeers.

[edit] Doctor Who (1996 television movie)

On January 10, 1996, it was announced that Paul McGann would play the eighth incarnation of the Doctor in the Doctor Who television movie. The television movie also starred Eric Roberts, Daphne Ashbrook, and the outgoing Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy who agreed to film a regeneration scene.

The Doctor Who television movie was a joint venture between the BBC, Universal Studios and the Fox Broadcasting Network. McGann had signed a contract to appear as the Eighth Doctor in a new Doctor Who series, if Fox or Universal exercised their option. Thus, the television movie was supposed to be a "back door pilot" in that, if it obtained respectable ratings, the new series would continue to be produced. The movie aired on May 14, 1996 in the US and on May 20, 1996 in the UK. Although it earned 9.08 million viewers and was very successful in the UK, ratings were very low in the United States. As a consequence, Fox did not exercise its option to pick up the series and Universal could not find another network who was interested in airing a new Doctor Who series. Thus no new series was produced until 2005, after all the contractual rights had returned to the BBC, and the movie became McGann's only televised appearance as the Eighth Doctor.

Although McGann played the Doctor on television only once, he gave permission for his likeness to be used on the covers of the BBC's Eighth Doctor novels and he has reprised the role of the Eighth Doctor in an extensive series of audio plays by Big Finish Productions. McGann's first Big Finish audio play appearance was in 2001 in the story Storm Warning which featured Blake's 7 leading man, Gareth Thomas. McGann's main companions in the audio plays are Charley Pollard (played by India Fisher) and C'rizz (played by Conrad Westmaas). It was through the Big Finish audio plays that McGann's Doctor finally got a chance to face many of the classic Doctor Who villains like the Daleks (The Time of the Daleks) and the Cybermen (Sword of Orion).

For nine years, McGann was treated as the "current" Doctor by the majority of fandom until Christopher Eccleston assumed the role in 2005. McGann continues to play the Eighth Doctor on audio. Five Eighth Doctor dramas were broadcast in BBC 7's The 7th Dimension slot between August 2005 and January 2006. They were in release order, starting with Storm Warning, although Minuet in Hell was judged unsuitable for the timeslot, and skipped. Two more Eighth Doctor audios, Shada and The Chimes of Midnight were broadcast in December 2005 and January 2006; all six of these stories were rebroadcast on BBC7 beginning in July 2006. As of January 2007, a series of all-new plays starring McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Sheridan Smith as companion Lucie Miller is being broadcast on BBC7.

[edit] After Doctor Who

In the years following his appearance as the Doctor, Paul McGann continued to diversify his acting portfolio with the television and movie roles he accepted. In 1997, appeared as a concerned father in the film FairyTale: A True Story and, later that same year, as Rob in Downtime and in 1998, he appear as Capt. Greville in The Dance of Shiva.

In the 2000's McGann's film appearances began to increase with the of films like My Kingdom (2001), Listening (2003) and Gypo (2005). Perhaps his most iconic role, since Doctor Who, came in 2002, when McGann appeared in the film adaptation of the third story from Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles, Queen of the Damned. McGann played the part of David Talbot, a member of the secret organization The Talamasca, which researches and investigates the supernatural. Talbot has appeared in many of Rice's novels and has become a central character over the years. The film also starred Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau and pop star Aaliyah, in her final role before her death. McGann has also been in demand for voice-over work in Britain in recent years, particularly on television documentaries and commercials.

As of June 2006, McGann's most recent film is Poppies which is due for release in the autumn.

Paul also appears as the mysterious underworld figure Mr Johnson in the independent feature Naked in London, due for release in early 2007.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Trivia

• Paul McGann's brother, Mark McGann, also auditioned for the role of the Eighth Doctor.
• McGann's single appearance as the Doctor in the television movie makes him the actor with the shortest "screen time" in that role. However, in terms of being the "current" actor playing the Doctor, McGann (1996-2005) is tied with Sylvester McCoy (1987-1996) as being the longest serving current Doctor, with nine years each.
• McGann is also known for audio book narration having read several Pat Barker and Bernard Cornwell novels. McGann was intended to play lead character, Richard Sharpe, in the Television dramatisation of Cornwell's novels, however due to an injury early in filming the role was passed to Sean Bean instead.
• His voice also featured in the 1997 video game Ceremony of Innocence together with those of Isabella Rossellini and Ben Kingsley.
• Coincidentally, his co-star in Withnail, actor Richard E. Grant, also played the Doctor in the 2003 animated webcast Scream of the Shalka. As this new Doctor was originally intended to be the canonical Ninth Doctor, at the time it was wryly observed by fans that "'and I' regenerated into 'Withnail'."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
2007	Naked in London	Mr Johnson
2006	Poppies	Tony
2005	Gypo	Paul
2003	Listening
2002	Queen of the Damned	David Talbot
2001	My Kingdom	Dean
1998	The Dance of Shiva	Capt. Greville
1997	Downtime	Rob
1997	FairyTale: A True Story	Arthur Wright
1993	The Three Musketeers	Girard/Jussac
1992	Alien³	Golic
1991	Afraid of the Dark	Tony Dalton
1990	Paper Mask	Matthew Harris
1990	The Monk	Father Lorenzo Rojas
1989	Dealers	Daniel Pascoe
1989	The Rainbow	Anton Skrebensky
1989	Tree of Hands	Barry
1989	Empire of the Sun	Lt. Price
1987	Withnail & I	Marwood / "... and I"

[edit] Television

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
2006	Tripping Over	Jeremy
2006	If I Had You	Philip Andrews
2005	Marple: Sleeping Murder	Dickie Erskine
2005	Kidnapped	Colonel MacNab
2004	Lie With Me	Gerry Henson
2001 - 2003	Hornblower	Lieutenant Bush
2002	The Biographer	Andrew Morton
2002	Blood Strangers	DC David Ingram
2001	Sweet Revenge	Patrick Vine
2001	Hotel!	Ben Carter
2000	Fish	Jonathan Vishnevski
2000	Nature Boy	Steve Witton
1999	Forgotten	Ben Turner
1998	Our Mutual Friend	Eugene Wrayburn
1996	Doctor Who	The Doctor (8th Doctor)
1995	The One That Got Away	Chris Ryan
1995	The Merchant of Venice	Bassanio
1995	The Hanging Gale	Liam Phelan
1995	Catherine the Great	Potemkin
1992	Nice Town	Joe Thompson
1990	Drowning in the Shallow End	Colin
1986	The Monocled Mutineer	Percy Toplis

[edit] References

Preceded by Sylvester McCoy

The Doctor (Eighth Doctor) 1996

Succeeded by Christopher Eccleston

v • d • e The Doctors
First Doctor (William Hartnell) | Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton)
Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) | Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) | Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker)
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) | Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann)
Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) | Tenth Doctor (David Tennant)
Other Doctors
Cushing Doctor (Peter Cushing) | Shalka Doctor (Richard E. Grant)

[edit] External links

• The McGann Brothers official website
• Paul McGann at the Internet Movie Database
• The McGann Library fan forum
• On Borrowed Time - Paul McGann article at Kasterborous.com

Persondata
NAME	McGann, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Character Actor
DATE OF BIRTH	November 14, 1959 (age 47)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Surrey, England, UK
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH