David Tennant
David Tennant was born on 18 April 1971 in Bathgate, West Lothian and grew up in Ralston, Renfrewshire, where his father (the Reverend Alexander (”Sandy”) McDonald) was the local Church of Scotland minister (and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1997). Tennant was educated at Ralston Primary and Paisley Grammar School where he enjoyed a fruitful relationship with English teacher Moira Robertson, who was among the first to recognise his potential. He then earned a bachelor’s degree from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, where he was friends with Louise Delamere.
At the age of three, Tennant told his parents that he wanted to become an actor because he was a fan of Doctor Who. Although such an aspiration might have been common for any British 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 of the Pet Shop Boys, after reading a copy of Smash Hits magazine — because there was another David McDonald already on the books of the Equity union. His second choice for a stage name was David Brandon and his third choice was Chris McDonald.
In December 2005, The Stage newspaper listed Tennant at No.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”. In October 2006, Tennant was named as “Scotland’s most stylish male” in the Scottish Style Awards. He was named “Coolest Man on TV” of 2007 in a Radio Times survey. He also won the National Television Awards award for Most Popular Actor in 2006, 2007 and 2008. He was voted 16th Sexiest Man In The World by a 2008 Cosmopolitan survey.
He was ranked the 24th most influential person in the British media, in the 9 July 2007 MediaGuardian supplement of The Guardian. Tennant appeared in the paper’s annual media rankings in 2006.
In December 2008 Tennant was named as one of the most influential people in show business by British theatre and entertainment magazine The Stage, making him the fifth actor to achieve a ranking in the top 20 (in a list typically dominated by producers and directors). One of the editors for The Stage said that Tennant placed highly on the list because he was “the biggest box office draw in recent memory”.
According to an interview in issue 375 of Doctor Who Magazine, Tennant drove a Škoda in which he was caught twice on the same day on the M4 for speeding while returning to London from Cardiff in October 2006. On Top Gear on 23 December 2007, David said that his Škoda had been taken in for servicing, and it was no longer financially viable, and by the time the episode had aired, he had traded it in. Tennant drives a Toyota Prius; a supporter of ecologically friendly technologies, in 2008 Tennant was voted “Greenest Star on the Planet” in an online vote held by Playhouse Disney as part of the Playing for the Planet Awards.
Tennant has been a supporter of the Labour Party and appeared in a Party political broadcast for them in 2005. He is a celebrity patron of the Association for International Cancer Research.
