Actor
John Simm made his professional acting debut in 1992 with his role as Joby Johnson in an episode of Rumpole of the Bailey.
In 1995, John played as a psychotic teenager in Cracker. He received a Best Actor Award at the Valencia Film Festival for his feature film debut role in the coming-of-age drama, Boston Kickout. John appeared on stage in the Nick Ward play as Danny Rule at the Royal Court Theatre.
In 1996, John played Colin in Simon Bent's Goldhawk Road, at the Bush Theatre.
John first found fame in 1997 in the critically acclaimed drama The Lakes.
In 1999, John appeared as Jip in the award-winning, clubbing film, Human Traffic and Michael Winterbottom's acclaimed Wonderland.
In 2002, John featured in another Michael Winterbottom film and sang the acoustic version of Blue Monday as New Order front man Bernard Sumner in 24 Hour Party People. He also appeared as Raskolnikov in BBC's Crime and Punishment adapted by Tony Marchant.
In 2004, John starred in the BAFTA award-winning drama, Sex Traffic and reunited with Shaun Parkes (from Human Traffic) in Blue/Orange.
John was nominated for a 2006 BAFTA® TV Award for Best Actor for his role as Sam Tyler in the BAFTA® Pioneer Audience award winning, 70's style series Life on Mars.
In 2007, John played Vincent van Gogh in the biographical drama The Yellow House and also returned to the Bush Theatre as the title character in the comedy Elling, which later transferred to the Trafalgar Studios for his West End debut and for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Olivier Award.
John also played The Master in the long-running BBC series Doctor Who in 2007 and would later reprise his role in 2009 and 2017.
In 2008, John played Edward Sexby in The Devil's Whore, written by Peter Flannery. Later that year he performed at The Royal Variety Performance with Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller.
In 2009, John starred in the film Skellig with Tim Roth and Kelly Macdonald. John also returned to the west end stage starring opposite Ian Hart, Lucy Cohu and Kerry Fox in the Andrew Bovell play Speaking in Tongues at the Duke of York's theatre.
In 2010, John played Hamlet at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre.
In 2011, John co-starred in Mad Dogs that reunited him with Philip Glenister and Marc Warren along with Max Beesley and Ben Chaplin. Mad Dogs received a BAFTA nomination for best drama serial. the fourth season was completed in 2013.
John also starred In Exile, in 2011, with Jim Broadbent. His performance earned him his second BAFTA nomination for Best Actor.
In 2012, John starred as Jerry in a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre.
In 2013, Series one of The Village, a 6-part drama by Peter Moffat which begins in 1912 and spans a hundred years, aired on BBC One. John joined Simon Russell Beale to star in Harold Pinter's macabre tragic comedy The Hothouse which returned to London's West End in a new production directed by Jamie Lloyd.
In 2014, John led the cast of BBC America's new original series Intruders which he learned and adopted an American accent for. From writer and executive producer Glen Morgan (The X-Files) and based on Michael Marshall Smith's novel “The Intruders”, the series is a contemporary, chilling, paranormal drama set in the moody Pacific Northwest.
At the same time while filming Intruders in Vancouver, BC, John was also filming for Series 2 of The Village in Derbyshire, UK.
In late 2014, John completed filming ITV drama Code of a Killer, starring as Dr. Alec Jeffreys' and based on the true story of his discovery of DNA fingerprinting and its first use by Detective Chief Superintendent David Baker in catching a double murderer.
In 2015, John returned to the stage for Patrick Marber’s version of Three Days In The Country at the National Theatre which was then immediately followed with another stage production back in The West End until February 2016 for Jamie Lloyd's 50th Anniversary of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming at Trafalgar Studios, London.
In 2016, John began filming in Los Angeles for ABC's new series The Catch from Shondaland's Shonda Rhimes.
In late 2017, work on Collateral, a mini-series about a modern-day state of the nation project, Trauma, an ITV thriller and White Dragon, an ITV series has begun.
Memorable quotes
on roles:
"I always seem to play evil bastards"
on appearance:
"Someone once said I had an innocent face but evil eyes"
on diaries:
"Erm, I did once for a while when I was at Blackpool College and It's absolutely hilarious. For some reason I called my diary Aggerton. Aggerton Sachs. I don't know what I was on. What a name! "Dear Aggerton.."