- Born
- Height6′ 1″ (1.86 m)
- Mark Gatiss is an accomplished author, actor and playwright. Originally from Sedgefield, County Durham, he graduated from Bretton Hall Drama College with a BA (honors) in Theatre Arts.
He was one-quarter of the award-winning comedy team The League of Gentlemen (1999), and became heavily involved in the post-television Doctor Who (1963) scene, having written a variety of novels and audio plays, together with a string of short supernatural/science-fiction films (most of which he appeared in). He also co-wrote three sketches for BBC2's "Doctor Who Night" in November 1999.
When Doctor Who (2005) was re-imagined by Russell T. Davies and returned to television, Gatiss became part of the writing team. He had another major success as the co-creator of Sherlock (2010) for the BBC with Steven Moffat and also stars in the series as Mycroft Holmes. He has co-written plays for the Edinburgh Festival and appeared in a number of theatre and radio shows.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Andrea Johnson
- SpouseIan Hallard(2008 - present)
- ParentsMaurice GatissWinifred Rose Gatiss
- His writings frequently have a Victorian setting to them
- In 1997, along with his fellow League of Gentlemen (Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson), he won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They became the first sketch group to win since the Awards began in 1981. The first Sketch group to win was The Cambridge Footlights which featured Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, Emma Thompson, Paul Dwyer and Paul Shearer.
- Along with Sir Derek Jacobi, he is one of only two actors to play both the "Doctor Who" character the Doctor and his greatest enemy, the Master. He played the former in the spoof The Web of Caves (1999) originally aired as part of BBC Two's "Doctor Who Night" and the latter in the Big Finish "Doctor Who Unbound" audio drama "Sympathy for the Devil". He also played Professor Richard Lazarus, an agent of the Master and an antagonist to the Doctor, in the Doctor Who (2005) episode "The Lazarus Experiment".
- When writing for The League of Gentlemen, he always writes with Jeremy Dyson, while Reece Shearsmith always writes with Steve Pemberton. This is to avoid arguments.
- In 2002 he was nominated along with Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson for Best Entertainment at the Olivier Awards for their show The League of Gentlemen: Live at Drury Lane (2001). They lost out to "Shockheaded Peter", created and devised by Julian Bleach, Anthony Cairns, Julian Crouch, Graeme Gilmour, Tamzin Griffin, Jo Pocock, Phelim McDermott, Michael Morris and The Tiger Lillies (Martyn Jacques, Adrian Huge and Adrian Stout).
- Won Best Supporting Actor Award for his role in 'Coriolanus' at British Stage Awards 2015.
- [on Nigel Kneale] He is amongst the greats - he is absolutely as important as Dennis Potter, as David Mercer, as Alan Bleasdale, as Alan Bennett, but I think because of a strange snobbery about fantasy or sci-fi it's never quite been that way. Now he's gone, perhaps people will reassess - his major works are absolutely of lasting importance. He was a TV giant.
- [on his 1992 novel "Nightshade"] What appealed to me enormously, apart from the sheer thrill of being published, was to have a shot at writing Doctor Who (1963). Not only that, but to write Doctor Who (1963) as I thought it should be done, effectively redressing what I felt to have been wrong with the programme in its later years.
- [on "Nightshade"] I was reacting against the sort of garish Who of the late Eighties that I'd found an increasing turn-off. Things were undoubtedly getting better, just when the programme was cancelled, but there was still a sort of muddled quality, an almost perverse refusal to tell a straightforward story that I found very frustrating. So I wanted "Nightshade" to be an ultra-grim and horrific adventure in the mould of favourites such as Genesis of the Daleks [Genesis of the Daleks: Part One (1975)), The Caves of Androzani (The Caves of Androzani: Part One (1984)] and Frontios [Frontios: Part One (1984)].
- [on Doctor Who (1963)] TV has created very few original and memorable heroes, but the Doctor stands out as one of the honourable exceptions, and it is no accident that he continues to be a source of fascination for many TV nostalgists. At its height, Doctor Who (1963) was part of the nation's life; 25 minutes of wonder, sandwiched roughly between the end of Grandstand (1958) and the start of Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game (1971). It was scary, funny, unique and, yes, dash it, as British as the flag.
- I tried to persuade The South Bank Show (1978) to devote an edition to Kneale [Nigel Kneale], only to be told he wasn't a "big enough figure". This was doubly dispiriting, not only because, to anyone interested in TV drama, Kneale is a colossus, but because it seemed to confirm all the writer's gloomy predictions regarding the future of broadcasting. Couldn't the medium celebrate one of its giants?
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