Paul McGann

Paul McGann came to prominence in 1986 as Percy Toplis in the BBC serial The Monocled Mutineer, a lead role in a drama that argued loudly with the official version of the First World War. A year later he was the second half of Withnail & I, credited on screen only as "...& I", the sober one being dragged around by a magnificent ruin. The film flopped and then refused to die, which is roughly the shape of his whole career: the things he is loved for are the things that took years to find their audience.

Then in 1996 he played the Doctor. The television film was meant to relaunch Doctor Who for an American network and did not, leaving McGann with a single screen outing as the eighth incarnation and a fanbase that never accepted that as the end of it. From 2001 he kept the part alive in licensed audio drama, then returned to the screen in 2013 and again in 2022, which makes him the rare actor whose defining role was mostly performed into a microphone.

The rest is character work, often better than the vehicle carrying it. He is Golic, the twitchy prisoner in the third Alien film; two named parts in the 1993 Three Musketeers; David Talbot in Queen of the Damned; a vicar in a horror spoof nobody could have taken seriously. His steadiest screen job is Lieutenant William Bush across the Hornblower films from 1998 to 2003, a competent second in command played without any actorly begging for attention, and it is probably the purest demonstration of what he does.