Peter Capaldi Biography

Peter Dougan Capaldi (born 14 April 1958) is a Scottish actor, a film director and screenwriter. He has had a large number of roles in film and television, and is known for his role as Malcolm Tucker in the BBC comedy series The Thick of It and its spin-off film In the Loop. In 1995, he won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film for Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, which he directed. He has also won a BAFTA Award, a Chlotrudis Award and two British Comedy Awards. On 4 August 2013, the BBC announced during a live broadcast that he will portray the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running TV series Doctor Who.

Early life

Capaldi was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother's family was from Killeshandra, County Cavan, Ireland, and his father's family was from Picinisco, Italy. He was educated at St Teresa's Primary School in the city's Possilpark district, St Matthew's Primary School in Bishopbriggs, and at St Ninian's High School, Kirkintilloch, before attending the Glasgow School of Art.

Capaldi displayed an early talent for performance by putting on a puppet show in primary school. While at high school, he was a member of the Antonine Players, who performed at the Fort Theatre in Bishopbriggs. When an art student, he was the lead singer in a punk rock band called Dreamboys, whose drummer was future comedian Craig Ferguson.

Career

Capaldi's first significant acting performance came in 1983, when he played Danny Oldsen in Local Hero. He featured as Ozzy in a 1985 episode of Minder, and had roles in The Lair of the White Worm and Dangerous Liaisons in 1988. In 1990 he starred in Chain, a four part thriller on BBC2 written by Desmond Lowden and directed by Don Leaver. In 1995, Capaldi won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film for his film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, which he directed. In the same year he also wrote Soft Top, Hard Shoulder, which won the Audience Award at the London Film Festival, and wrote and directed Strictly Sinatra. He voiced Chief Petty Officer Grieves in the BBC Radio Ministry of Defence comedy Our Brave Boys, and soon after landed his first starring role on television as Luke Wakefield, a closeted gay man who imagines he has witnessed a crime, in the BBC drama series Mr Wakefield's Crusade. He played fictional Songs of Praise producer Tristan Campbell in two episodes of the sitcom Vicar of Dibley, and a transvestite in ITV's Prime Suspect 3. In the Channel 4 series Psychos, he played a mathematician with bipolar disorder, made an appearance as a university professor in the sitcom Peep Show, and played a prime suspect in the 2007 series of Waking the Dead. In Neil Gaiman's gothic fantasy Neverwhere, he portrayed the angel Islington.

In 2005, Capaldi was cast in what is arguably his best-known role, as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the BBC comedy series The Thick of It, which he played from 2005 to 2012. The character was said to be largely, if loosely, based upon Tony Blair's spin doctor Alastair Campbell. Capaldi himself has said that he based his performance more on Hollywood power players, such as the often abrasive Harvey Weinstein. For his performance as Tucker, he won a BAFTA Award for Best Performance in a Comedy Role and two British Comedy Awards. A film spin-off from The Thick of It, In the Loop, was released in 2009.

In 2007 and 2008, Capaldi appeared as Mark Jenkins in the E4 comedy-drama series Skins. He also appeared in the Midsomer Murders episode "Death in Chorus" and ITV1's Fallen Angel. He played a fictional version of Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii, a 2008 episode of the science-fiction series Doctor Who. He returned to the Doctor Who franchise in 2009, playing civil servant John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth. He appeared as King Charles I in the Channel 4 series The Devil's Whore, aired in 2008, as well as providing his voice for the animated film Haunted Hogmanay and it's sequel Glendogie Bogey. He returned to directing with the BBC Four sitcom Getting On, one episode of which he appeared in as a doctor. Later that year, he wrote and presented A Portrait of Scotland, a documentary detailing 500 years' history of Scottish portrait painting. He played Balthazar, one of the Three Wise Men in the 2010 BBC adaptation of The Nativity.

Capaldi has also worked as a prolific audio book narrator, and his many titles include several of the works of Iain Banks. He starred as Rory in the television version of Banks' The Crow Road. From 2011 to 2012, he played Professor Marcus in The Ladykillers at the Liverpool Playhouse, then transferred to the Gielgud Theatre in London. He appeared in The Field of Blood as Dr. Pete, for which he received a BAFTA Scotland nomination, and also had a small role as a therapist in Big Fat Gypsy Gangster, written by and starring his Getting On co-star Ricky Grover. In 2012, Capaldi played Randall Brown, the new Head of News, on the BBC2 drama The Hour. He appeared in World War Z (2013), and has been cast as King Kinloch in Maleficent (2014). In 2013, Capaldi directed Born to be King, which he also wrote. He is due to star in Inside the Mind of Leonardo, a documentary about Leonardo da Vinci. He will also be portraying Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian newspaper in The Fifth Estate. In 2014, he will be starring in a new adaptation of The Three Musketeers as Cardinal Richelieu.

On 4 August 2013, it was announced in a live BBC special entitled Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor that Capaldi would portray the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, superseding Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor. During his appearance in the special, he admitted to having been a lifelong fan; at the age of 15, he wrote to the Radio Times about the series.

Personal life

Capaldi is a patron of the Association for International Cancer Research and the Scottish children's charity, the Aberlour Child Care Trust. He lives in Crouch End with his wife, Elaine Collins, and their daughter, Cecily.

Filmography

Actor

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1982	Living Apart Together	Joe
1983	Local Hero	Oldsen
1984	Turtle Diary	Assistant keeper
1987	The Love Child
1988	The Lair of the White Worm	Angus Flint
1988	Dangerous Liaisons	Azolan
1991	December Bride	Young Sorleyson
1992	Soft Top Hard Shoulder	Gavin Bellini
1994	Captives	Simon
1997	Bean	Gareth
1997	Shooting Fish	Mr. Gilzean
1998	What Rats Won't Do	Tony
1999	The Greatest Store in the World	Mr. Whiskers
2002	Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War	Derek
2002	Max	David Cohn
2002	Solid Geometry	David Hunter
2003	Shotgun Dave Rides East	Rob
2004	Modigliani	Jean Cocteau
2004	Niceland (Population. 1.000.002)	John
2004	Wild Country	Father Steve
2005	House of 9	Max Roy
2005	The Best Man	Priest
2006	Pinochet in Suburbia	Andy McEntee
2007	Magicians	Mike Francis
2009	In the Loop	Malcolm Tucker	Chlotrudis Award for Best Cast Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated " Central Ohio Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor (2nd place) Nominated "? British Independent Film Award for Best Actor Nominated "? Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated "? Evening Standard British Film Awards: Peter Sellers Award for Comedy Nominated " International Cinephile Society Award for Best Supporting Actor (2nd place) Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actor of the Year Nominated "? Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor (2nd place) Nominated "? New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor (3rd place) Nominated "? Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor
2012	Big Fat Gypsy Gangster	Peter VanGellis
2013	World War Z	WHO doctor
2013	The Fifth Estate	Alan Rusbridger
2014	Maleficent	King Kinloch

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1984	Crown Court	Eamonn Donnelly	Episode: "Big Deal"
1985	Minder	Ozzy	Series 6, Episode 2: "Life in the Fast Food Lane
1985	Travelling Man		Series 2, Episode 6: "Blow-Up"
1985	John and Yoko: A Love Story	George Harrison
1986	C.A.T.S. Eyes	Caldicott	Series 2, Episode 2: "Powerline"
1989	Rab C. Nesbitt	Preacher	Episode: "Rab C. Nesbitt's Seasonal Greet"
1989	Shadow of the Noose	Robert Wood
1989	Dramarama	British Ambassador	Series 7, Episode 7: "Rosie the Great"
1990	Ruth Rendell Mysteries	Zeno Vedast	3 episodes
1991	Agatha Christie's Poirot	Claude Langton	Series 3, Episode 4: "Wasps' Nest"
1991	Selling Hitler	Thomas Walde
1991	Titmuss Regained	Ken Cracken	3 episodes
1992	Mr Wakefield's Crusade	Luke Wakefield
1992	Early Travellers in North America	Robert Louis Stevenson
1992	The Secret Agent	Mr Vladimir
1993	The Comic Strip Presents...	John	Series 5, Episode 6: "Jealousy"
1993	Stay Lucky	Robin	Series 4, Episode 2: "The Driving Instructor"
1993	Prime Suspect	Vernon "Vera" Reynolds	Series 3
1994	Chandler & Co	Larry Blakeson
1994	The All New Alexei Sayle Show	Doug Hatton	Episode: "Drunk in Time"
19941996	The Vicar of Dibley	Tristan Campbell	2 episodes
1996	Delta Wave	Dinsdale Draco	2 episodes
1996	Neverwhere	Islington	4 episodes
1996	The Crow Road	Rory McHoan	4 episodes
1997	The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling	Lord Fellamar	3 episodes
1997	Michelob advert
1999	Psychos	Mark Collins	1 episode
2001	High Stakes	Michael Calderwood	Series 1, Episode 6: "Dream Team
2003	In Deep	Jeremy	Series 3, Episode 7: "Character Assassination: Part 1"
2003	Fortysomething	Dr. Ronnie Pilfrey	5 episodes
2003	Judge John Deed	Alan Roxborough, MP	Series 3, Episode 3: "Conspiracy"
2004	Sea of Souls	Gordon Fleming	Episode: "Seeing Double"
2004	My Family	Colin Judd	Series 5, Episode 10: "Dentist to the Stars"
2004	Foyle's War	Raymond Carter	Series 3, Episode 4: "War of Nerves"
2004	Peep Show	Professor Alistair MacLeish	Series 2, Episode 4: "University Challenge"
2005	The Afternoon Play	Billy Shannon	Series 3, Episode 5: "The Singing Cactus"
20052012	The Thick of It	Malcolm Tucker	British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Performance British Comedy Award for Best Television Actor British Comedy Award for Best Television Actor
2006	Donovan	Dr. Angus Baldwin	Series 1, Episode 3
2006	Midsomer Murders	Lawrence Barker	Series 9, Episode 5: "Death in Chorus"
2006	"Haunted Hogmanay"	Jeff Wylie	Voice
2007	Waking the Dead	Lucien Calvin	Episode: "The Fall"
2007	Coming Up	Joe	Episode: "Brussels"
2007	Fallen Angel	Henry Appleton
20072008	Skins	Mark Jenkins	3 episodes
2008	Doctor Who	Caecilius	Series 4, Episode 2: "The Fires of Pompeii"
2008	Midnight Man	Trevor
2008	Glendogie Bogey	Jeff Wylie	Voice
2008	The Devil's Whore	King Charles I
2009	Torchwood: Children of Earth	John Frobisher
2009	Getting On	Doctor	1 episode Director of series 1-2
2009	A Portrait of Scotland	Himself	Writer
2010	Ten Minute Tales	The Man
2010	Accused	Frank Ryland	Series 1, Episode 3
2010	The Nativity	Balthazar	BBC adaptation 4 episodes
2010	Audi advert	Narrator	Voice
2011	The Penguins of Madagascar	Uncle Nigel	Voice 1 episode
2011	The Suspicions of Mr Whicher	Samuel Kent	ITV adaptation
2011	The Field of Blood	Dr. Pete
2012	The Cricklewood Greats	Himself	Writer
2012	The Hour	Randall Brown	Nominated " British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor
2010	BBC Two advert	Narrator	Voice
2013	Inside the Mind of Leonardo	Leonardo da Vinci	Documentary
2013	Anchor advert	Narrator	Voice
2013	Doctor Who	The Doctor	Series 8
2014	The Musketeers	Cardinal Richelieu

Director

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
1995	Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life (short)			Academy Award for Live Action Short Film Angers European First Film Festival: Audience Award for Best Short film BAFTA Award for Best Short Film
2001	Strictly Sinatra
2009-2010	Getting On (TV series)			Directed all episodes of series 1 and 2
2012	The Cricklewood Greats (TV Movie)
2014	Born to be King			Pre-production