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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.

Biography

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 miniseries 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 television producer for the BBC.

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. "The Trouble with the Tabloids", The Guardian Media supplement, October 1997. Archived at Paul McGann Estrogen Brigade.

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

Career

Early appearances

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 off of 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 2006 it has yet to be released on DVD.

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. In Alien³, McGann played the character "Golic" who is one of the first to see the alien and runs screaming when the creature attacks Boggs (Leon Herbert) and him. He is later found in a deranged state and brought to the infirmary in a straitjacket, with no one believing his story about the alien. McGann's character had a more substantial role in the initial edit of the film, but these scenes were cut from the final theatrical release. Much of this deleted material was restored in the director's cut of Alien³ on DVD.

Doctor Who

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 famous movie actor Eric Roberts, Daphne Ashbrook, MADtv's Will Sasso 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, when all the contractual rights 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 has given 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 (actor). McGann's main companions in the audio plays are Charley Pollard (played by British actress India Fisher) and C'rizz (played by Conrad Westmaas). It was through the Big Finish audio plays, 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) as well as being the last incarnation of Doctor to appear with Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Minuet in Hell).

For nine years, McGann was treated as the "current" Doctor by the majority of fandom until Christopher Eccleston assumed the role in 2005. However, 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, and will be followed with a series of all-new plays beginning on New Year's Eve 2006.

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.

Trivia

• Paul McGann's brother, Mark McGann, 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.

Filmography

Television

References

External links

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

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