Biographie

Out of all working actors in Hollywood, he holds the record for the most onscreen character deaths, 47 in total.

He spoofed his role from Alien: Le huitième passager (1979) in Mel Brooks' parody La folle histoire de l'espace (1987).

An early passion for acting was triggered when he saw Alec Guinness play Fagin in the film Oliver Twist (1948).

He was friends with the late John Entwistle, bassist and founding member of The Who. He had written a poem about him and read this out loud at his memorial October 24, 2002.

He was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who (2005) when Christopher Eccleston declined to reprise the role for the Time War episodes. To avoid throwing off the numbering of subsequent Doctors (Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, etc.), his version was designated the War Doctor. He was the first Oscar-nominated actor to play the Doctor in Doctor Who (1963) or Doctor Who (2005). At age 73, he also became the oldest actor to play a version of the Doctor on television, the first CBE to play the Doctor on television, and in 2015, he became the only actor to have played the Doctor in Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (1996) or Doctor Who (2005) to have been conferred with a knighthood.

I've done some stinkers in the cinema. You can't regret it; there are always reasons for doing something, even if it's just the location.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

People like us, who turn ourselves inside out for a living, we get into an emotional tussle rather than a marriage. It's fire I'm playing with and it isn't surprising I'm not the ideal companion on a daily basis. But it takes two. I mean, Christ, I haven't forced anybody.

St Michael's was one of those very rarefied, very Anglo-Catholic establishments where they rejoiced in more religious paraphernalia and theatricality than the entire Vatican. More incense-swinging, more crucifixes, more gold tassels, more rose petals, more holy mothers, more God knows what. Three times a day they played the Angelus. When you heard it, you had to stop whatever you were doing, do the Hail Marys in your head, and then return to what you were doing. Like it would come in the middle of a Latin class. I'm just conjugating the love verb, amo, amas, amat, and doingggg! you have to stand up, go through the whole Angelus, mother-of-God thing and then crack on with amamus, amatis, amant. Sir! Because, if you didn't, Whack! Cane. Belt. Education by fear. And the really funny thing was they wouldn't tolerate bullying between peers. Prefects could bash you with a slipper, but you weren't allowed to give each other a rough time. Like who do you think you are? You haven't yet earned the privilege of being violent.

My parents' lot had literally crawled away from the second world war, taking with them two vital commodities by way of a survival mechanism: respectability and security. It was odd, coming from a Christian household, but the big thing was about not being what they called "common". I got all that, "Don't play with him, he's common". I had a friend called Grenville Barker who'd come round sometimes and play football on the lawn, but not very often. And I wasn't allowed to go to his home very often because they were working class. He was what my mother called a bad influence. Everything had to do with influence. My mother was desperate I should be properly influenced, have a proper, received accent, be sent away to school at eight. So all you can do is go into yourself, immerse yourself in your own life.