David Tennant, the stage name of David MacDonald, (born 18 April 1971) is a Scottish actor, from Bathgate, West Lothian, best known as the tenth actor to portray the Doctor in the television series Doctor Who. Already a well-known theatre actor, he achieved wider fame in the United Kingdom for his TV roles in Casanova and Doctor Who. International audiences know him best for playing Barty Crouch Jr. in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In December 2005, The Stage newspaper listed Tennant at #6 in its "Top Ten" listing of the most influential UK television artists of the year, citing his roles in Blackpool, Casanova, Secret Smile and Doctor Who. In January 2006, readers of the British gay and lesbian newspaper The Pink Paper voted Tennant the "Sexiest Man in the Universe" over David Beckham and Brad Pitt. A poll of over 10,000 women for the March 2006 issue of New Woman magazine ranked him 20th in their list of the "Top 100 Men". Biography Early life Tennant was born in Bathgate, West Lothian[1] but grew up in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father was the local minister, and later a Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Tennant was educated at Ralston Primary, Paisley Grammar School, and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama where he was friends with Louise Delamere. Moving to London in the early 1990s, Tennant lodged with comic actress and writer Arabella Weir, with whom he became close friends and then godfather to one of her children. He has subsequently appeared alongside 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. Personal life In 2006, Tennant dated actress Sophia Myles, who appears with him in the Doctor Who episode The Girl in the Fireplace. They started dating after the filming in October 2005. Tennant traces his family tree in an episode of BBC Two's popular genealogy series, Who Do You Think You Are?, broadcast 27 September 2006. In January 2011, several newspapers in Britain reported that Tennant was engaged to actress Georgia Moffett, with a wedding planned for 2012.[56] They have a daughter, born in March 2011 Career At the age of three, Tennant told his parents that he wanted to become an actor because he was mad about Doctor Who. Although such an aspiration might have been common for a Scottish child of the 1970s, Tennant says he was "absurdly single-minded" in pursuing his goal. He adopted the professional name "Tennant" — inspired by Neil Tennant, the lead singer of the Pet Shop Boys — because there was another David McDonald already on the books of the actors' union Equity. His first professional role upon graduating from drama school was in a staging of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui co-starring Ashley Jensen, one of several plays in which he performed as part of agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company. Tennant developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company for whom he specialised in comic roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors and Captain Jack Absolute in The Rivals, although he also played the tragic role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Tennant appeared in several high-profile dramas for the BBC, including Takin' Over the Asylum (1994), He Knew He Was Right (2004), Blackpool (2004), Casanova (2005) and The Quatermass Experiment (2005). In film, he has appeared in Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things, and as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. One of his earliest big screen roles was in Jude (1996), in which he shared a scene with his Doctor Who predecessor Christopher Eccleston, playing a drunken undergraduate who challenges Eccleston's Jude to prove his intellect. Doctor Who returned to British screens in 2005, with Christopher Eccleston playing the role of the Ninth Doctor. After Eccleston's announcement that he would not be returning for a second series, the BBC confirmed Tennant as his replacement in a press release on 16 April 2005. He made his first, brief appearance as the Tenth Doctor in the episode "The Parting of the Ways" (2005) at the end of the regeneration scene. His first full-length outing as the Doctor was a 60-minute special, "The Christmas Invasion", first broadcast on Christmas Day 2005. His final episode, 'The End of Time Part Two' aired on the 1 January 2010. Tennant will be appearing alongside former co-star Catherine Tate in the Shakespeare comedy Much Ado About Nothing at London's Wyndham's Theatre from 16 May 2011 to 3 September 2011.