[存档]What You Should Know About Peter Capaldi - A panoply of eccentric biographical data re: The New Doctor Who - Vanity Fair

What You Should Know About Peter Capaldi
A panoply of eccentric biographical data re: The New Doctor Who.
BY DAVID KAMP AUGUST 18, 2014 12:00 AM
Peter Capaldi already knows what it’s like to be part of a phenomenon with a fervent fan base. His professional breakthrough came in Bill Forsyth’s enduringly beloved indie hit Local Hero (1983), a Scottish-seaside fable in which he played a tremulous oil-company lackey, and he achieved bona fide U.K. stardom (and boutique renown among American Anglo-comedy nerds) via Armando Iannucci’s TV series The Thick of It (2005–12), on which he played the splenetic, inventively profane (“Fuckity-bye!”) political spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.
But Capaldi’s latest role has propelled him into a realm where the fans are truly, madly, deeply passionate—and, it must be said, geeky. He was tapped last year by the BBC to play the 12th incarnation of the title character of the 51-year-old sci-fi TV program Doctor Who: a formerly low-production-values British institution that, since its 2005 reboot, has evolved into a lavishly produced worldwide hit—even if the Doctor’s longtime alien adversaries, the Daleks, still resemble dome-lidded kitchen wastebins decorated with spray-painted Ping-Pong balls. Herewith, as BBC America rolls out Doctor Who’s first Capaldi-driven season in the U.S., some data gleaned from an afternoon conversation with 2014’s model of a modern major Time Lord.
HE IS 56 years old, in marked contrast to the recent trend for young, dishy Doctors—his immediate predecessors having been David Tennant (34 at the time of his casting) and Matt Smith (26 at the time of his casting). This makes Capaldi the oldest Doctor to debut since the very first, William Hartnell.
HE WAS an avowed Doctor Who fan as a youth—a circumstance which, though it has paid off handsomely, did no favors to his social standing back then. Due to his interest in the program, along with a general predilection for sci-fi/fantasy and an abiding fascination with the manned moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s, Capaldi was given the nickname Moon Man—not by friends, he says, but by “people who were cruel to me.”
HE COUNTED a Dalek action figure among his favorite childhood toys, playing with it for years until its protruding eye and protruding gun broke off.
HE GREW up in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland, though his paternal grandfather came from Picinisco, a small village in the Lazio region of Italy, where the elder Capaldi worked as a shepherd before immigrating to the U.K. and getting into the ice-cream business.
A FEW years ago, when Capaldi was starring in a West End adaptation of the classic Ealing film comedy The Ladykillers, he received a surprise package at the theater: a shipment of local Picinisco cheese, a gift from the village’s mayor, prideful that the grandson of a Piciniscan was headlining on the London stage.
HE ATTENDED the Glasgow School of Art, whose Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed main building was damaged heavily in May by a fire.
HE ARRIVED at school in 1976, he says, looking “like Neil Young, with long hair and flares.” Then punk broke, “and we all went back to college with peroxide hair and leather trousers.”
WHILE AT art school, he co-founded a punk band called the Dreamboys, of which he was the lead singer. His band initially rejected an aspiring drummer named Craig Ferguson, the future late-night TV host. Ferguson re-auditioned, though, and made it into the group the second time around.
WHEN CAPALDI appeared in 2009 on Ferguson’s CBS talk show, the host introduced him by saying, “I’ve actually taken acid with my next guest.”
HE HAS been rangy and lean for the better part of his public life. However, he insists, there was a “Fat Peter” career-downturn period in which his wife—actress and TV producer Elaine Collins, to whom he has been married since 1991—told him, “This is why you’re not getting any work: because you look like a sofa, basically.”
HE WON an Oscar in 1995, not in one of the acting categories but for best live-action short film. His short was called “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life,” and featured Collins, Withnail & I star Richard E. Grant, and future Downton Abbey regular Phyllis Logan.
HE BELONGS, on account of his Thick of It notoriety, to a select fraternity of famous people—its membership also including Don Rickles and Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Susie Essman—whose fans, upon meeting said famous person, actively and exuberantly solicit abuse. He used to oblige such fans by imploring them to “fuck off,” but has stopped doing so—“because Doctor Who doesn’t swear.”
HIS GREATEST moment of Doctor Who fanboy-fantasy realization thus far came when he was called upon for the first time to operate the TARDIS, the homely 60s-era London police box that serves as the Doctor’s vessel for time travel. As he stood surrounded by set technicians explaining how to use it, Capaldi says, “I had to be very patient and not say to them, ‘I know exactly how to operate it. You don’t have to tell me a thing. Moon Man is here.’ ”
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