Guest Author - Pam Lawrence

The youngest of three lads, Christopher Eccleston was born in 1964, among the terraces of Salford, Manchester. Most recently seen as Dr Who in the revival of the classic serial, he has also enjoyed success in some challenging big screen roles, such as the psychotic David Stephens in the 1994 movie Shallow Grave, and his breakthrough role as the mentally challenged Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It in 1991. It has been in his multitude of TV roles though, that the British public has come to appreciate the talent and depth of the dour lad from Manchester with the hawk like, brooding good looks.

It was a few years before the Central School of Speech and Drama graduate landed his first film role in Let Him Have It. Eccleston struggled with his character, trying to find the truth behind Bentley, a man wrongly accused of killing a policeman in 1950s London. Rather than the suggested simplistic and romanticized portrayal of a chirpy Cockney, Eccleston got his own way, and through researching Bentley’s learning disabilities and epilepsy, struck the right chord. The result was compelling rather than cloying.

He credits his closeness to his family for his dedicated work ethic and for always remaining true to his Northern roots. Growing up, he was impressed by the television work of writers like Alan Bleasdale (Boys from The Blackstuff, The Monocled Mutineer) and Ken Loach (Kes, The Gamekeeper). They were speaking from the heart, about real, working class people and nitty gritty issues. Good TV, Eccleston has often said in interviews, can be a transforming thing, reaching more people than theatre or film ever could.

Eccleston has often portrayed working class men in tragic circumstances. The 1994 Cracker story, To Be a Somebody, (also featuring the brilliant Robert Carlyle in a breakthrough role), featured a young Eccleston as DCI Bilborough, a troubled copper on the hunt for a seemingly random killer. In one of the most compelling and harrowing pieces of TV to come out of the nineties, Eccleston’s character is stabbed by Alby (Carlyle) and left to bleed to death on a deserted, cobbled terraced backstreet.

The actor has always deemed great writing essential to television success - far more important than star vehicles and glitz. Jimmy McGovern, the writer behind Cracker, has always been one of his favourites. It was McGovern who penned the controversial 1996 dramatisation of the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium tragedy- (also a central theme in To Be a Somebody), and Eccleston who starred as Trevor Hicks, a man coming to terms with the loss of his child.

Our Friends in The North, a 1996 BBC production with a radically huge budget, told the story of four friends from Newcastle, from 1964 to 1995. Eccleston played the impassioned politically minded Nicky Hutchinson in the series that was lauded as an epic- and one of the most successful BBC series to emerge from the 1990s.

If you have yet to discover this versatile actor, marathon runner and huge football fan through anything but Dr Who, you may want to check him out in a some of these Hollywood vehicles- including a role as Nicole Kidman’s husband in the Others, the Duke of Norfolk in Elizabeth, and Jude in the colossally depressing film of the same name, opposite Kate Winslet. Otherwise, seek him out on DVD for some of his brilliant and true to life TV portrayals.