Sylvester McCoy

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Sylvester McCoy 2018

Sylvester McCoy (* 20th August 1943 in Dunoon , Argyll and Bute as Percy James Patrick Kent Smith ) is a Scottish actor . His best-known roles are that of the seventh doctor in Doctor Who and that of the wizard Radagast the Brown in the Hobbit trilogy .

Life

youth

McCoy had an Irish mother and an English father. He never met his father, who was killed during a military operation in World War II a few months before he was born . He grew up mainly in his native town of Dunoon. McCoy was raised very religiously by his mother and wanted to be a priest in his youth, which is why he attended various seminars in Aberdeen between the ages of twelve and sixteen . He gave up this venture, however, and instead graduated from Dunoon Grammar School .

Acting beginnings

After school, McCoy moved to London , where he worked for an insurance company for five years. In addition, he also temporarily worked in the event center The Roundhouse , where he was finally discovered and recruited by the actor Ken Campbell . He became known as a member of the comedy group The Ken Campbell Roadshow .

One role was a stunt man named Sylveste McCoy. The name was listed in a program booklet for fun than his real one and developed into his stage name through a misunderstanding. He later added an "r". This was followed by further appearances in various series and television shows, until he was able to play a small film role in the horror film Dracula for the first time in 1979 . He had television appearances in productions such as Vision On , Jigsaw and Tiswas .

Doctor Who

Sylvester McCoy as the 7th Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace on the set of The Hand of Omega

In 1987 Sylvester McCoy took over the coveted role of Doctor from Colin Baker and held it until the end of the series in 1989. He returned to this role in 1993 in the anniversary episode Dimensions in Time and again in 1996 in the opening scenes of the Doctor Who television film. In this, the seventh doctor dies from incorrect treatment in a hospital in San Francisco , since he is not recognized as an alien Timelord. Paul McGann regenerated to a doctorate .

In the series, McCoy's doctorate is rather humorous at the beginning, later a manipulative strategist. McCoy played the role with a Scottish accent and heavily rolled r . In 1990 he was voted by readers of Doctor Who Magazine for best doctor chosen before the previously unbeaten favorite Tom Baker . The doctor portrayed by McCoy has also appeared in several novels and comics.

Since 1998 he has played the doctor again in the Big Finish radio play series.

Further career

McCoy (2014)

In addition to his television career, McCoy is also active as a long-time theater actor. So he played the sheriff of Nottingham in a musical version of Robin Hood on the theater stages of London . In 2007 he was part of the ensemble of a production of The King of Narnia staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company . In the same year McCoy played the role of the fool in Ian McKellen's King Lear and went on summer tours with the RSC to Sydney , Australia and Wellington , New Zealand . In the following year he impersonated the title role for a short time in a stage performance of Der Mikado .

McCoy was rarely seen in the field of film. He was considered in the early 1990s for the role of Governor Swann in the planned pirate film Pirates of the Caribbean , but the production company Disney did not give the green light for the start of filming at this time. The film was only shown in cinemas in 2003 with a different cast. In Peter Jackson's Tolkien film The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) McCoy was also a candidate for the role of Bilbo Baggins , which ultimately went to the first choice of Ian Holm .

For this, however, McCoy received the role of the magician Radagast in 2012 in the film adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit , the prequel to The Lord of the Rings . Here he acted again alongside Ian McKellen , with whom he had already been on the theater stage a few years earlier.

Personal

McCoy lives in his Scottish homeland with his wife Agnes, the couple have two children. Although he was very religious in his youth, he now professes atheism .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Sylvester McCoy  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Cate Blanchett, Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy join cast of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. December 7, 2010, accessed January 13, 2011 .
  2. ^ Sylvester McCoy: As Doctors, we're a part of a very special club. July 23, 2018, accessed June 19, 2020 .