David Tennant

David John McDonald (better known under his stage-name David Tennant) portrayed Barty Crouch Jr in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He is best known for his role as the Doctor in the long-running BBC series, Doctor Who.

Career
Tennant's first professional role upon graduating from drama school was in a staging of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui co-starring Ashley Jensen, one of several plays in which he performed as part of the agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company.

Moving to London in the early 1990s, Tennant lodged with comic actress and writer Arabella Weir, with whom he became close friends and then godfather to one of her children. He has subsequently appeared alongside Weir in many productions; as a guest in her spoof television series, Posh Nosh; in the Doctor Who audio drama Exile and as panelists on the West Wing Ultimate Quiz on More4.

Tennant developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company for whom he specialised in comic roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors (a role he recorded for the 1998 Arkangel Complete Shakespeare production of the play) and Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals, although he also played the tragic role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

In 1995, Tennant appeared at the Royal National Theatre, London, playing the role of Nicholas Beckett in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. The plot required Tennant to appear near-naked on stage.

Tennant appeared in several high-profile dramas for the BBC, including Takin' Over the Asylum (1994), He Knew He Was Right (2004), Blackpool (2004), Casanova (2005) and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). In film, he has appeared in Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things, and as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. One of his earliest big screen roles was in Jude (1996), in which he shared a scene with his Doctor Who predecessor Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect.

In 2005, soon after his appearance in Goblet of Fire, Tennant was signed to take over as the Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who after Eccleston chose to leave after a single season. Tennant is has been identified by Doctor Who Magazine and other media as one of the most popular actors to play the iconic SF character. In October 2008, he announced that he would be stepping down as The Doctor after appearing in four special episodes scheduled to air by the end of 2009; he will be replaced, in turn, by relative unknown Matt Smith.

In 2008, coinciding with his announcement regarding Doctor Who, Tennant performed in Hamlet the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK. His co-star was Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame. A back injury forced Tennant to undergo surgery towards the end of 2008, but he recovered in time to complete his run on Hamlet and film his final Doctor Who episodes.

Since completing his final scenes in Doctor Who, Tennant has filmed his performance of Hamlet for eventual TV broadcast, and is reportedly being considered for a number of high-profile movie roles. He is also scheduled to host Masterpiece Contemporary, a new version of Masterpiece Theatre, for the American PBS network in the fall of 2009.

Behind the scenes

 * Tennant's first solo appearance as the Doctor occurred in a (canonical) mini-episode produced for the 2005 Children in Need Appeal. This episode was first broadcast on 18 November 2005 -- the same day Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released in cinemas.
 * As The Doctor in Doctor Who, Tennant mentions Expelliarmus, J. K. Rowling and the final Harry Potter book in the Doctor Who episode The Shakespeare Code. (The Doctor Who novel The Gallifrey Chronicles establishes that, within the "Whoniverse", there were in fact 11 Harry Potter novels, not seven.)
 * During the two-part Doctor Who story The Age of Steel and Rise of the Cybermen, he appears along with Roger Lloyd-Pack who in the Goblet of Fire appeared as Barty Crouch Sr who was a friend whereas he played the enemy in Doctor Who whereas here, David plays the villain whilst in Doctor Who, he is the hero.

Notes and references
David Tennant