Who's Who

nyone drawing up a list of actors to play the new Doctor Who would never have dreamed of putting forward the name of Christopher Eccleston.

The Salford-born actor has an impressive CV of TV roles, including Our Friends In The North, Cracker and Hillsborough. His films have included Shallow Grave and Jude. He played Hamlet on stage at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

None of which would have suggested asking him to play the Time Lord in the BBC1's hotly-anticipated revival, especially as Eccleston has always been a very private actor who shied away from publicity and parties. You couldn't imagine him welcoming the barrage of press and public recognition that playing the doctor would bring.

The only person Eccleston has to blame for being the new face of Doctor Who is himself. He emailed co-executive producer and lead writer Russell T Davies to register his interest in playing the time traveller's ninth incarnation.

The attraction was Queer As Folk writer Davies, with whom the actor had worked on The Second Coming. Eccleston is a fan of his writing, so asking to join his latest project was natural enough. "It was easy," recalls the 41-year-old actor. "Which is great in a way because it is a big deal, I now realise."

He's had a taste of media interest after being romantically linked by the press with his Doctor Who co-star Billie Piper, who split from husband Chris Evans during the filming of the series. "Maybe I felt I was able to handle it now," he says of becoming public property.

"Only time will tell. There are still ways to remain private. I've always felt that there were some people in the industry who will use their personal life to further their career, rather than their actual performances and I don't think that's right.

"What my dad taught me was, basically, do your job properly. I hope my privacy remains and that my performance will get me another job and that will be enough.

"I do think, actually, that readers and viewers really aren't that interested. If you give them a performance, they'll invest in you, whether you're sleeping with a goat or whatever."

His seriousness hasn't deserted him entirely as he analyses his new role. He admits that a lot of his past work "has been comfort food for liberals". With Doctor Who, he's trying to entertain a different audience. "It's exciting and funny and scary and it's aimed at families, so I'm kind of acting for children and I feel very lucky to be able to do that," he says.

"For all the danger the Doctor encounters, the basic message of the show is seize life, be optimistic and see the positives. The series is written with passion and humour, and there's an innocence about it.

"It's a kind of celebration of life in all its forms. In everything the Doctor does, he's saying, 'it's great to be alive'. I can hear people sneering at that, but that's what he believes and it's a nice thing to say to kids, or anybody for that matter."

Unlike those who've been advocating the return of Doctor Who, Eccleston has no preconceptions as he rarely watched it as a child. "I've got some memories of it, but I was always out playing. So I didn't have to think about what had gone before," he explains.

"I've just always tried to do the very best television I possibly could, and I knew that, having worked with Russell before, this series had a good chance of being great television."

As a child, he preferred Star Trek to Doctor Who. Now, he's a fan of the Time Lord. "I finally allowed myself to watch Tom Baker in a DVD of The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. I drank two bottles of red wine and thought, 'right, I'll watch it'," he recalls.

'I knew then what the role entailed and how difficult it is to play. It's great, all the profile you get, but it's a difficult thing to do. You're the motor for every scene, and you have to deliver a lot of pseudo and scientific jargon and give it some charisma and wit.

"But as a child, no. Because I didn't have a camp sensibility, the wobbly sets and things just made me think, 'I don't believe in that', and I just ended up watching Star Trek. Now I look at the old DVDs and I think it's fantastic and I'm proud to be part of it."

Before the actor signed up, Davies had already written the first two scripts, giving his leading man a template to work on. The new Doctor wears a leather jacket and speaks in a Northern accent. He rejected the sartorial flamboyance of previous Doctors because "I didn't want the costume to be my performance".

As far as he's concerned the Doctor is someone who lives for the here and now. "He doesn't like to think about his past - there's some pain there - and his only concern about the future is that he makes sure it's there," he says.

"He kind of eats life. He's not on a mission, he hasn't got an agenda, he's just there. Things just happen, he responds to them and does what he thinks is right."

He tried to treat it like any other job that he's done, taking it as seriously as playing Hamlet on stage. "The Beatles used to say that they felt like they were at the centre of a hurricane where it's really calm. And I felt that," he says.

"On my first day on set I was quite calm because I thought, 'I've got my script, I've got the day ahead of me. I spent it chasing a brilliant actor of restricted height called Jimmy V, who was dressed as a pig dressed as a spaceman, up and down a corridor. And it got more surreal."

Whether he would play the Doctor again if the BBC commits to another series has yet to be decided. And he's not about to be absorbed completely by the hoo-ha - or should that be Who-ha - surrounding the return of the series.

"I've been in the game 18 years so there's a certain amount of knowledge of how this business works and how you should conduct yourself with the public and things.

"But I've met a number of Whovians, real serious Doctor Who fans, and they've been so kind and generous to me and excited about the series. They're not interested in gossip about me or the set, but interested in the myth of the Doctor. I think I can handle that."

* Doctor Who returns to BBC1 on Saturday at 7pm.

* Journey through time - see Saturday's Northern Echo.

Published: 24/03/2005