David Tennant rose to fame for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, returning to the show as the fourteenth incarnation of the character in 2022.
91 Facts About David Tennant
2.
David Tennant's father was a minister who served as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
3.
David Tennant grew up with his brother Blair and sister Karen in Ralston, where his father was the local minister.
4.
At the age of three, David Tennant told his parents that he wanted to become an actor because he was a fan of Doctor Who, but they encouraged him to aim for more conventional work.
5.
David Tennant later said that he was "absurdly single-minded" in pursuing an acting career.
6.
David Tennant watched almost every Doctor Who episode for years and once spoke to Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker at a book-signing event in Glasgow.
7.
David Tennant's talent was noticed by actress Edith MacArthur, who told his parents that she believed he would become a successful theatre actor after she saw him perform when he was 10 years old.
8.
David Tennant attended Saturday classes at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland before passing an official audition at age 16, becoming one of their youngest students and studying there between the ages of 17 and 20.
9.
David Tennant made his professional acting debut while still in secondary school.
10.
David Tennant made an early television appearance in the Scottish TV sitcom Rab C Nesbitt as a transgender barmaid called Davina.
11.
David Tennant has subsequently appeared with Weir in many productions: as a guest in her spoof television series Posh Nosh, in the Doctor Who audio drama Exile, and as panellists on the West Wing Ultimate Quiz on More4.
12.
David Tennant developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
13.
David Tennant subsequently specialised in comic roles, playing Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors and Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals, although he played the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.
14.
David Tennant starred in the 2003 London production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman.
15.
David Tennant contributed to several audio dramatisations of Shakespeare for the Arkangel Shakespeare series.
16.
David Tennant's roles include a reprisal of his Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, as well as Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, Edgar in King Lear, and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, all of which he performs in his natural accent.
17.
In 1995, David Tennant appeared at the Royal National Theatre, London, playing the role of Nicholas Beckett in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw.
18.
In 2003 David Tennant appeared in the film Bright Young Things.
19.
David Tennant was nominated for Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for his performance in Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero.
20.
David Tennant replaced him as of the second series, making his first, brief appearance as the Tenth Doctor in the episode "The Parting of the Ways" at the end of the regeneration scene, and appeared in a special 7-minute mini-episode shown as part of the 2005 Children in Need appeal, broadcast on 18 November 2005.
21.
David Tennant began filming the new series of Doctor Who in late July 2005.
22.
David Tennant's first full-length outing as the Doctor was a 60-minute special, "The Christmas Invasion", first broadcast on Christmas Day 2005.
23.
David Tennant had been formally offered the role of the Doctor during rehearsals for The Quatermass Experiment.
24.
David Tennant has gone on record as saying that, contrary to tabloids reports, he was not upset at not being able to play the role in his own accent and in fact had never wanted to.
25.
David Tennant previously had a small role in the BBC's animated Doctor Who webcast Scream of the Shalka.
26.
Not originally cast in the production, David Tennant was recording a radio play in a neighbouring studio, and when he discovered what was being recorded next door convinced the director to give him a small role.
27.
In 2004 David Tennant played a lead role in the Big Finish audio play series Dalek Empire III as Galanar, a young man who is given an assignment to discover the secrets of the Daleks.
28.
David Tennant played an unnamed Time Lord in another Doctor Who Unbound play Exile.
29.
UNIT: The Wasting, was recorded between David Tennant getting the role of the Doctor and it being announced.
30.
David Tennant played the title role in Big Finish's adaptation of Bryan Talbot's The Adventures of Luther Arkwright.
31.
David Tennant later performed alongside Davison's daughter, Georgia Moffett in the 2008 episode "The Doctor's Daughter".
32.
David Tennant featured as the Doctor in an animated version of Doctor Who for Totally Doctor Who, The Infinite Quest, which aired on CBBC.
33.
David Tennant starred as the Doctor in another animated six-part Doctor Who series, Dreamland.
34.
David Tennant guest starred as the Doctor in a two-part story in Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, broadcast in October 2009.
35.
David Tennant continued to play the Tenth Doctor into the revived programme's fourth series in 2008.
36.
David Tennant played the Doctor in four special episodes in 2009, before his final episode aired on 1 January 2010, where he was replaced by the Eleventh Doctor, portrayed by Matt Smith.
37.
In November 2017, three new audio dramas were released by Big Finish Productions, with David Tennant starring as the Tenth Doctor, alongside Billie Piper as Rose Tyler.
38.
David Tennant returned to the role on 13 July 2018, as part of the live Muppets show The Muppets Take the O2 in London.
39.
David Tennant revived this performance for the anniversary of the Royal Court Theatre in a rehearsed reading.
40.
On 25 February 2007, David Tennant starred in Recovery, a 90-minute BBC One drama written by Tony Marchant.
41.
David Tennant played Alan, a self-made building site manager who attempted to rebuild his life after suffering a debilitating brain injury.
42.
In November 2008, David Tennant played Sir Arthur Eddington in the BBC and HBO biographical film Einstein and Eddington, which was filmed in Cambridge and Hungary.
43.
David Tennant was the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" on Top Gear in December 2007, where he claimed to have unsuccessfully auditioned for a role on Taggart 26 times.
44.
David Tennant is the voice behind the 2007 advertising campaign for catalogue retailer Argos, and appeared in adverts for The Proclaimers' 2007 album and learndirect in June 2008.
45.
David Tennant lent his voice to adverts for Tesco Mobile, Nintendo Wii, and American Express.
46.
David Tennant featured in an episode of Trick or Treat on Channel 4 in May 2008.
47.
The episode showed David Tennant apparently predicting future events correctly by using automatic writing.
48.
David Tennant was open and up for it, and I got a good reaction.
49.
David Tennant returned for the final episode of the series with the rest of the participants from the other episodes in the series to take part in one final experiment.
50.
David Tennant appeared in the 2008 episode "Holofile 703: Us and Phlegm" of the radio series Nebulous in the role of Doctor Beep, using his Lothian accent.
51.
In early 2009, David Tennant narrated the digital planetarium space dome film "We Are Astronomers" commissioned by the UK's National Space Centre.
52.
David Tennant joined Franz Ferdinand onstage to play the guitar on their song "No You Girls" on a special Comic Relief edition of Top of the Pops.
53.
In summer 2009, David Tennant filmed St Trinian's II: The Legend of Fritton's Gold.
54.
David Tennant returned to cohost the show for one day in October 2010.
55.
David Tennant joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, to play Hamlet with Patrick Stewart and Berowne in Love's Labours Lost in 2008.
56.
Hamlet transferred to the Novello Theatre in London's West End in December 2008, but David Tennant suffered a prolapsed disc during previews and was unable to perform from 8 December 2008 until 2 January 2009, during which time the role was played by his understudy Edward Bennett.
57.
David Tennant returned to his role in the production on 3 January 2009, and appeared until the run ended on 10 January.
58.
In October 2011, David Tennant started shooting the semi-improvised comedy film, Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger in Coventry.
59.
David Tennant played dual roles: the main character, put-upon teacher Mr Peterson, and his "golden boy" twin brother and rival.
60.
David Tennant auditioned for the role of Hannibal Lecter in NBC's Hannibal; he was narrowly beaten for the part by Mads Mikkelsen.
61.
David Tennant presented the new comedy quiz show Comedy World Cup, in 2012 which ran on Saturday nights for seven episodes.
62.
In January 2012, David Tennant was appointed to the Royal Shakespeare Company board, to be on the selection committee interviewing and choosing the new artistic director.
63.
David Tennant repeated his performance as Richard II in the RSC's 'King and Country' cycle in 2016, starting at the Barbican Theatre in London before transferring to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.
64.
David Tennant starred in the ITV detective series Broadchurch as DI Alec Hardy between 2013 and 2017.
65.
David Tennant filmed the second series of Broadchurch during mid-2014, and the third between May and October 2016.
66.
Between January and May 2014, David Tennant filmed the US remake of Broadchurch, re-titled Gracepoint.
67.
Between late January and March 2013, David Tennant filmed The Escape Artist for BBC One in which he played a talented junior barrister who had yet to lose a case.
68.
David Tennant starred opposite Rosamund Pike and Billy Connolly in What We Did on Our Holiday, a semi-improvised comedy film; shooting took place from 17 June to 30 July 2013 in Scotland.
69.
David Tennant is the narrator on Xbox One video game Kinect Sports Rivals, released in 2014.
70.
David Tennant portrayed the villainous Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, a television series from Marvel and Netflix.
71.
On 9 February 2015, David Tennant appeared on the Radio 4 panel show Just a Minute, becoming the show's most successful debut contestant.
72.
David Tennant voiced the Propaganda Minister in the 2015 Square Enix video game Just Cause 3.
73.
Between March and June 2017 David Tennant appeared in Patrick Marber's Don Juan in Soho at the Wyndham's Theatre.
74.
David Tennant played psychopathic villain Cale Erendreich in the thriller film Bad Samaritan, written by Brandon Boyce and directed by Dean Devlin.
75.
David Tennant plays Crowley in the miniseries Good Omens, which was released in full on Amazon Prime Video on 31 May 2019 and was released on BBC Two on 15 January 2020.
76.
David Tennant received his first credit as an executive producer for the series.
77.
In September 2022, David Tennant starred as Reverend Harry Watling in BBC1's Inside Man, which was written by Steven Moffat.
78.
In December 2022, David Tennant starred as Alexander Litvinenko in the ITV1 dramatisation Litvinenko.
79.
David Tennant was named "Coolest Man on TV" of 2007 in a Radio Times survey.
80.
David Tennant won the National Television Awards award for Most Popular Actor in 2006,2007,2008, and 2010.
81.
In 2008, David Tennant was voted "Greenest Star on the Planet" in an online vote held by Playhouse Disney as part of the Playing for the Planet Awards.
82.
David Tennant was ranked the 24th most influential person in the British media on 9 July 2007, according to MediaGuardian.
83.
David Tennant appeared in the paper's annual media rankings in 2006.
84.
David Tennant was voted the third best dressed man in Britain in GQ reader's poll for 2013.
85.
David Tennant's popularity has led to impersonations of him on various social networking sites, leading the BBC to issue a statement making it clear that David Tennant does not use any of these sites and any account or message purporting to be from him is fake.
86.
David Tennant declared his support for then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2010, and labelled David Cameron a "terrifying prospect".
87.
David Tennant remained neutral on the issue of Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum, stating that it was not his business as he no longer lived in Scotland.
88.
David Tennant rarely discusses his private life in interviews, citing his belief that "relationships are hard enough with the people you're having them with, let alone talking about them in public".
89.
David Tennant has said that he believes religion "must have" shaped his character, and revealed that he is an occasional churchgoer.
90.
David Tennant is married to English actress Georgia Moffett, making him the son-in-law of actress Sandra Dickinson and Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison.
91.
In November 2015, David Tennant announced that they had recently had a daughter named Doris.