Theatre Head Shots: The Evolution of David Tennant
...a photographic journey of how birthday boy David repped himself in the trade
Today, April 18th, is David Tennant’s 53rd birthday. On this auspicious occasion, I thought I’d take you along with me on a trip down a David-centric memory lane…in his head shots!
Every actor needs a good head shot. Head shots are an actor’s professional calling card, and therefore are representative of the actor as they want to appear to casting directors and other hiring professionals. Traditional practice, then and now, was to bring a hard copy of a head shot along when doing an audition.
And - as out-of-date head shots were strongly discouraged (and they weren’t cheap to do!) - this gives us a unique opportunity to see what David looked like and how he chose to represent himself during each stage of his career.
So let’s see how they changed, shall we?
When Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf opened at the Dundee Rep in September 1992, David was 21. He’d already been a part of one professional theatre company, 7:84 (Scotland), and this - for one season at the Dundee Rep - was his second opportunity to do so. David played Nick, one half of a newly-married couple who are unfortunate enough to accept an invitation to a late-night drinking session from George and Martha, a bitter, alcoholic couple who are hell-bent on each other’s destruction.
By November 1993 - when he stepped on stage as Curdie Peterson in the Dundee Rep’s production of The Princess and the Goblin by Stuart Paterson - David had turned 22 and had decided to change his headshot.
In this holiday season panto, goblins crawl from the underworld Kingdom of Prince Krankl to hunt the lovely Princess Irene. Princess Irene's sweetheart is a miner's son named Curdie. Directed by Hugh Hodgart - one of David’s RSAMD teachers - it was a morality tale about the power of love versus hate.
David had moved to London by September 1994, when he got his first job in The Slab Boys Trilogy. But there weren’t any headshots of the actors in that programme, so we’ll have to move on to the second play David did when he arrived in the city, What The Butler Saw. And while a notation in an RSAMD Annual Director’s Report by Edward Argent written in July 1995 says David was in the Royal National Theatre company, I haven’t found any other information to confirm whether or not he actually was. If he was, it was short-lived; he didn’t do another play at the Royal National until 2003.
The programme for What The Butler Saw had two different covers - a white one and a black one, with varying usage depending on venue (as the production did a regional tour) - and it didn’t do traditional head shots and chose instead to use a scene from the play for each actor’s programme biography. David played Nicholas Beckett, a young bellboy who blackmails the wife of a philandering psychiatrist. And it was playing at the Royal National Theatre’s Lyttelton Theatre on 18 April 1995, David’s 24th birthday.
After a few years with the Royal Shakespeare Company (in As You Like It, The Herbal Bed, and The General From America, programmes which don’t feature actor’s head shots) David went onstage in August 1997 at the Queen’s Theatre to play Mickey in Hurlyburly. He was 26.
His headshot here is the first one we’ve seen so far where he’s smiling. But I have to admit I find it an odd choice, since the photo chosen for insertion in the programme for Hurlyburly appears to originate from a Sasha Gusov photo shoot taken four years earlier, in 1993!
Why this was done is unknown…but there we are.
After doing a few more plays (Comedians and Push Up, both of which are plays I don’t currently own programmes for) on April 18th, 2002 - his 31st birthday - David was onstage at the Donmar Warehouse as Jeff in Lobby Hero. He was to go on to play the same role at the New Ambassador’s Theatre in a transfer of the play. The head shot he chose to use for its programme was the same photo he had used three years earlier for his role as Edgar in 1999’s King Lear at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.
I can’t say what other (if any) head shot photos David was using in the years between 1999 and 2002, for in those years he’d mostly performed onstage for the Royal Shakespeare Company (in Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy Of Errors) and those programmes didn’t feature actor’s head shots.
At the age of 32 in November 2003, David signed on to play Katurian Katurian in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman at the NT’s Cottesloe Theatre in London. Katurian, a writer in a totalitarian state whose stories appear to reveal gruesome details about a series of child murders, is dragged in and interrogated by state officers trying to get to the bottom of the killings.
The play’s programme didn’t follow the tradition with regards to actor’s head shots, opting instead for photos of the actors during rehearsals for the play. These sorts of behind-the-scenes photos for productions were beginning to see some traction in the industry, and David’s photos would by and large follow suit.
In January of 2005 David was heading towards his 34th birthday when he took on the role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger. David’s portrayal of this quintessential angry young man would see him win Best Male Performance in the 2005 Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland.
Ah ha - look, it’s a new head shot!
Look Back in Anger would be David’s last theatre performance for many years, as he won the role of his lifetime when he was chosen as the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who. The role would of course catapault him into international fame, but it was also a great demand on his time; during his tenure in the role, he simply couldn’t find the time for theatre - until 2008. That year he’d made the decision to step out of the Tardis, and in so doing, he was finally able to make a stage return.
At the age of 37, David played the title role in Hamlet and appeared as Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost. These plays saw him debut another new head shot, and it was one he would use again in May 2011 - at the age of 40 - when he appeared opposite Catherine Tate as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. The photographer for this shot was Kenneth Kyle Dundas.
It wasn’t until 2013 - at the age of 42 - when he again changed his head shot. This one is familiar to many of David’s fans as a photo taken by his wife, Georgia, and appeared in the programme for the RSC production of Richard II.
On April 18th, 2017 - David’s 46th birthday - he was onstage at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London playing DJ, the title role in Don Juan in Soho. This production was described as a modern update “loosely based on Molière's tragicomedy 'Don Juan’...[which] transports the action to contemporary London and follows the final adventures of its debauched protagonist – a cruel seducer who lives only for pleasure.”
Photos used in the programme - including the full-page head shot and bio of David in the lead role - were taken at a photo shoot you can watch right here!
Finally, we visit the last two plays David’s done: 2022’s production of Good at the Harold Pinter Theatre and 2023’s production of Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse. In Good, the now 51-yr old David portrayed John Halder, an intelligent German professor who finds himself pulled into a movement - with unthinkable consequences. And in Macbeth, David - at the age of 52 - played the title role of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish play’.
The head shots used in both these productions were the same:
And that, my friends, is the end of our photographic journey through David’s years in the theatre!
May he have a happy 53rd year, and may we see him in many productions to come!
Some marvelous photos of David----head shots....and I found out what was the reference to "pillowman" by Michael Sheen Iin "Staged"! Also, it looks like the "Don Juan in Soho" shot is the one or adjacent to the one on his mug in "Staged". I think.
Thank you! It is interesting how DT presents himself over the years.