John Lavalie: Created page with "{{article | publication = Evening Herald | file = 1975-01-11 Evening Herald.jpg | px = 500 | height = | width = | date = 1975-01-11 | author = | pages = 7 | language = Engl..."

2025-05-28T00:06:54Z

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| text = Tom Baker is the new Dr. Who and is the fourth actor to take on the role of the intrepid time traveller in this highly successful sci-fi BBC-1 series.

Actor Tom Baker was working on a building site. when chosen for the part. The man who took over from Jon Pertwee is not the sort of person who takes the theatrical term "resting" literally.

"I find it rather daunting." Like most people he has watched "Dr. Who" and always thought it would be rather nice to "Have a stab at it." Little thinking that he ever would.

More innocent

He is 40, unmarried and comes from Liverpool.

He says he sees "Dr. Who" as rather more innocent and surprised by events than his elegant predecessor. "The thing about Dr. Who' is that he can really be anything he wants to be.

"I think the heaviest responsibility is suggesting that, while he is not a superman, he is definitely different. That, although the looks human he is from another world."

Another thing about "Dr. Who" that Tom Baker likes is the fact that he always wins.

"For half an hour every Saturday night, I save the universe," he says.

Tom became an actor because he wanted to do "something splendid and heroic." He also. always liked telling stories.

When he left school at 16, he joined a monastic order in the Channel Isles, leaving four years later when he realised he wasn't suited to the priesthood.

"I joined for the same reasons as I became an actor - only I answered the wrong calling initially."

After the army - national service - and drama school, he joined the York Repertory Theatre, where he was spotted by a director from the National Theatre.

He did a two-and-a-half year stint with the National, playing a variety of roles, including the Prince of Morocco in "Othello" with Olivier.

And it was Olivier who suggested him for his most well-known film part, Rasputin in "Nicholas And Alexandra".

Falstaff

Tom Baker likes working in the theatre, television and film equally. "I think each gratifies the other and ideally one should be able to switch around. I'd like to do a play a year, plus television and films." He says. he has a hankering to do "Falstaff" one day. He did "Macbeth" last year at London's Shaw Theatre and says it was a "most painful process."

"It was painful because of two things. I wasn't very good and the kids who came to see it didn't seem very interested in the play. It's not much fun having marshmallows thrown at you during a soliloquy."

After this he was out of work and took to the building site.

He has also been a gardener in his time.

"I think that unless you discipline yourself when you haven't got a job you can just sit around all day getting plastered in the pub. When don't have something in acting I do something else."

"It doesn't happen very often because I think with acting one thing creates another.

"And the thing about acting" is that you can professionally retreat into a world that would qualify most people for psychiatric treatment."

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Who is Tom Baker! - Revision history

John Lavalie: Created page with "{{article | publication = Evening Herald | file = 1975-01-11 Evening Herald.jpg | px = 500 | height = | width = | date = 1975-01-11 | author = | pages = 7 | language = Engl..."