1. John Simm is best known for playing Sam Tyler in Life on Mars, the Master in Doctor Who, and DS Roy Grace in Grace.
34 Facts About John Simm
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John Simm has twice been nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor.
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John Ronald Simm was born on 10 July 1970 in Leeds, the eldest of three children.
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John Simm grew up in Lancashire in numerous places around northwest England, including Blackpool, Burnley, Colne, Manchester, and Nelson.
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John Simm attended Edge End High School in Nelson, where he was inspired by his drama teacher Brian Wellock.
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John Simm starred in Guys and Dolls and West Side Story at Blackpool's Grand Theatre.
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John Simm then moved to London at the age of 19 to train at the Drama Centre London, where he studied Stanislavski's system of method acting.
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In 1992, Simm made his professional acting debut playing the role of Joby Johnson in an episode of the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey.
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John Simm appeared as a psycho in The Bill, as lovestruck schoolboy Richard Francis in Heartbeat, and as a drugged-up burglar in The Locksmith.
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In 1995, John Simm played the troubled teenager Bill Preece in ITV police drama Cracker.
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John Simm made his feature film debut in Boston Kickout, which won the Palmares Feature Film award at the 11th Cinema Jove - Valencia International Film Festival 1996.
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In 2002, John Simm featured in the film 24 Hour Party People as New Order frontman Bernard Sumner.
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Later that year, Simm starred opposite Christina Ricci and John Hurt in the film Miranda.
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In 2007, John Simm was cast by Russell T Davies to play an incarnation of the Master, the nemesis of the Doctor, in the long-running BBC series Doctor Who.
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John Simm reprised the role in the 2009 two-part special, "The End of Time".
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John Simm performed at the Royal Variety Performance with Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller, and starred in the film Skellig, in 2009.
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John Simm became involved in an ongoing project with Michael Winterbottom called Everyday, to be filmed in real time over five years.
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John Simm returned to the West End stage in autumn of 2009 to critical acclaim, starring in the Andrew Bovell play Speaking in Tongues at the Duke of York's Theatre.
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In September 2010, John Simm played Hamlet at the Sheffield Crucible.
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John Simm played Baxter in the project, that reunited him with Philip Glenister and Marc Warren along with Max Beesley and Ben Chaplin.
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On BBC One in May 2011, John Simm starred as Tom Rondstadt in Exile, alongside Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, and his wife, Kate Magowan.
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John Simm's performance earned him his second BAFTA nomination for Best Actor.
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From 17 May to 9 June 2012, John Simm starred as Jerry in a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the Crucible Theatre.
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John Simm then completed work on the three-part thriller, Prey, in which he plays detective Marcus Farrow.
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In February 2014, John Simm began filming the BBC America eight-parter Intruders in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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Later that year, John Simm played Alec Jeffreys, the man who discovered DNA fingerprinting, in Code of a Killer, a two-part drama for ITV.
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John Simm appeared for the first time at The National Theatre, playing the role of Rakitin to great acclaim, in Patrick Marber's Three Days in the Country, and was reunited with Jamie Lloyd, playing the role of Lenny in the 50th anniversary production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming in London's West End.
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In 2016, John Simm was invited to the US to act in The Catch for ABC.
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John Simm played the character of Rhys Griffiths, a recurring character in season 1 and a regular in season 2.
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On 6 April 2017, the BBC confirmed that John Simm would be reprising his role as the Master in the tenth series of Doctor Who; he appeared in the two-part finale, "World Enough and Time" and "The Doctor Falls".
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John Simm then starred in Strangers on ITV, starring as Jonah Mulray, a professor whose life comes crashing down when his wife is killed in a car crash in Hong Kong.
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John Simm starred in Pinter Six, consisting of Party Time and Celebration.
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In 2021, John Simm played the title role of DS Roy Grace in Grace, a Russell Lewis adaption, based on Peter James's best-selling crime fiction series novels.
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John Simm played lead guitar on a few of McCulloch's solo live shows, including one at Wembley Arena as the main support to Coldplay.