Mark Gatiss

Gatiss was born in Sedgefield, County Durham, England, to Winifred Rose (née O'Kane, 1931–2003) and Maurice Gatiss (1931–2021).

He grew up opposite the Victorian psychiatric hospital Winterton, and later in Trimdon, before his father, a colliery engineer, took a job as engineer at the School Aycliffe Mental Hospital in Heighington.

His family background is working class.

His passions included watching Doctor Who and Hammer Horror films on television, reading Sherlock Holmes and H.G. Wells, and collecting fossils.

All those interests have influenced his creative work.

Mark Gatiss (born 17 October 1966) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, director, producer and novelist.

One of his early forays into theatre was in Darlington in March 1983, playing Dad, in The Waiting Room by Tony Stowers, a macabre and surreal Pinteresque comedy, which explores a disintegrating family unit.

In July of the same year, he would have acted in Stowers' follow-up, A Sense of Insecurity, but was unable to take the role because his father insisted he take his exams instead.

Gatiss attended Heighington Church of England Primary School, and Woodham Comprehensive School in Newton Aycliffe.

At the latter, he was two years ahead of Paul Magrs, who also went on to write Doctor Who fiction.

Gatiss then studied Theatre Arts at Bretton Hall College, an arts college affiliated to the University of Leeds.

Gatiss is a member of the sketch comedy team The League of Gentlemen (along with fellow performers Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and co-writer Jeremy Dyson).

He first met his co-writers and performers at Bretton Hall, Yorkshire, a drama school which he attended after finishing school and having spent a gap year travelling around Europe.

The League of Gentlemen began as a stage act in 1995, which won the Perrier Award at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1997.

Other acting appearances include the comedy-drama In the Red (BBC Two, 1998), the macabre sitcom Nighty Night (BBC Three, 2003), Agatha Christie's Marple as Ronald Hawes in "The Murder at the Vicarage", a guest appearance in the Vic & Bob series Catterick in 2004 and the live 2005 remake of the classic science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment.

In the same year the show transferred to BBC Radio 4 as On the Town with the League of Gentlemen, and later arrived on television on BBC Two in 1999.

The television programme has earned Gatiss and his colleagues a British Academy Television Award, a Royal Television Society Award and the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux.

Outside The League, Gatiss' television work has included writing for the 2001 revival of Randall & Hopkirk and script editing the popular sketch show Little Britain in 2003, making guest appearances in both.

In 2001 he guested in Spaced as a villainous government employee modelled on the character of Agent Smith from The Matrix film series.

In the same year he appeared in several editions of the documentary series SF:UK.

In 2005, the film The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse was released, to generally positive reviews.

A second series of Nighty Night and the new comedy-drama Funland, the latter co-written by his League cohort Jeremy Dyson, both featured Gatiss and aired on BBC Three in the autumn of 2005.

He appeared as Johnnie Cradock, alongside Nighty Night star Julia Davis as Fanny Cradock, in Fear of Fanny on BBC Four in October 2006, and featured as Ratty in a new production of The Wind in the Willows shown on BBC One on 1 January 2007.

He wrote and starred in the BBC Four docudrama The Worst Journey in the World, based on the memoir by polar explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

Gatiss has also made three credited appearances in Doctor Who.

In 2007, he played Professor Lazarus in "The Lazarus Experiment".

Also in 2007, he appeared as Robert Louis Stevenson in Jekyll, a BBC One serial by his fellow Doctor Who scriptwriter Steven Moffat.

In 2008, he appeared in Clone as Colonel Black.

Shearsmith and Pemberton reunited in 2009 to create a similarly dark BBC sitcom, Psychoville, which featured an episode guest-starring Gatiss.

He is best known for his work with Steven Moffat, including co-creating and starring in the BBC series’ Sherlock (2010-17) and Dracula (2020), the former as Mycroft Holmes.

He also wrote several episodes of Doctor Who during Moffat’s tenure as showrunner.

His other TV roles include Game of Thrones.

Together with Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Jeremy Dyson, he is a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen.

In 2010, he portrayed Malcolm McLaren in the BBC drama Worried About the Boy which focused on the life and career of Boy George, and also appeared as Mycroft Holmes in the BBC drama Sherlock, which he co-created with Steven Moffat.

He adapted H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon into a television film of the same name for the BBC, also playing Professor Cavor.

He also made a three-part BBC documentary series entitled A History of Horror, a personal exploration of the history of horror cinema.

In 2011, he returned in the Series 6 episode "The Wedding of River Song" as a character known as Gantok, and in the 2017 Christmas special "Twice Upon A Time" as "The Captain".

The three reunited again in 2012 to film a series of sketches for the fourth series of CBBC show Horrible Histories.

This was followed on 30 October 2012 with a look at European horror with the documentary Horror Europa.

On 25 December 2013, a version of the ghost story "The Tractate Middoth" by M. R. James and adapted by Gatiss was broadcast on BBC Two as part of the long-running A Ghost Story for Christmas series.