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Paul Mackenzie Crook (born 29 September 1971) is an British actor and comedian. He is known for playing Gareth Keenan in The Office and Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Biography

Paul Mackenzie Crook was born in Maidstone, Kent, England, and grew up in Dartford. His father, Michael James Crook, worked for British Airways and his mother, Sheila Singh, was a hospital manager.^[1][2] He has two sisters, Zoe and Stephanie, and one stepbrother, Frank.^{[citation needed]}

As a child he collected stamps, Toby jugs and Star Wars figurines and would venture to ponds and lakes collecting amphibians and vegetation which he would often take home, store in his room, and paint. He would then release the animals back into the wild, and replant whatever he had picked, so as not to be reprimanded by his strict grandmother, Ethel. When he was ten years old, he was put on a course of hormone therapy for three years due to a growth hormone deficiency.^[1]

Aged 10, Crook discovered the thrill of performance when dominating an end-of-year school variety show with magic tricks and comedy gags.^[1] Then educated at the Wilmington Grammar School for Boys,^[3] he did his first seven plays there and joined the Orchard Youth Theatre in Dartford when he was about 15 years old. In the summers he spent time with his uncle at his tobacco farm in Northern Zimbabwe,^[2] where he developed his love for painting.^[1]

His favourite musicians are Nick Drake and greatly admired Kurt Cobain,^[4] whom in honour of he grew his hair long, adopted a beard and earrings, wore ripped jeans and started a heavy metal band called Up and Over.

Early career

Wanting to be a graphic artist,^[5] aged 18 he applied and was turned down three times for courses at the Kent Institute of Art & Design. He spent a while doing part-time jobs in a publishers, a library, a hospital, a fruit stall, a chicken factory, a brewery, a florist, a chimney sweep, Halfords and Pizza Hut.^[5]

Persuaded to join a local theatre company by its manager, he was guided to turn to comedic arts, resulting in Crook writing comedy sketches and the theatre manager becoming his agent.^[5] He then became a standup comedian alongside Iain Lee for about eight years, in the guise of Charlie Cheese, "the cheeky chirpy chappy Charlie from Chorley".^[1] They appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the mid-90's as Chalk and Cheese.^[6] He has also performed as a grotesque schoolteacher called Mr. Bagshaw, who is said to be based on a variety of obnoxious, overbearing Science teachers he was tutored by while in school.^[6]

Film and television career

In 1996 Crook appeared in his first 3 short films: The Man who Fell in Love with a Traffic Cone, The Crayon, the Cabbage and the Smelly Shirt and The Happy Life of the Deodorant Doctors.

Having been seen by Bob Mortimer in his one-man show in Edinburgh,^[3] alongside others including Sacha Baron Cohen they were offered their first major television roles was as comedy sketch contributors on Channel 4's The Eleven O'Clock Show in 1998, from which Crook was quietly dropped.^[6] He was later a member of the main cast of the BBC sketch show TV to Go in 2001.^[6]

In 2001, he auditioned for the role of Gareth Keenan in Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant popular mockumentary The Office. Written originally for a larger thuggish actor,^[6] Crook won the role and by the end of the series in 2003 had earned himself two BAFTA nominations.^[7]

Crook was featured in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and in Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007);^[4] as Ragetti, a pirate with a comically ill-fitting wooden false eye. He also said in 2010 that he can't return as his character Ragetti.

He has appeared in adverts as the character for Visa and M&M's. He has also featured as himself in an adverts for MTV, Film Four, and as a voice over artiste for motor insurance company Green Flag in 2007. In 2010 he provided a voice over in an advertisement for the electrical retailer Currys.

Crook also appeared as Launcelot Gobbo in Michael Radford's 2004 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and had a minor role in the 2004 film Finding Neverland as a theatre usher. Other films he has appeared in include The Gathering (2002), Sex Lives of the Potato Men (2004), Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004), and The Brothers Grimm (2005).

Crook has starred in three of Tim Plester and Ben Gregor's short films: as Gary Tibbs in Ant Muzak (2002), as Servalan in Blake's Junction 7 (2004), and as Glorious George in World of Wrestling (2006). All three of these films have been released on DVD. He has also voiced in a television series called Modern Toss and has featured in I Want Candy (2007 film) as Mr Dulberg, a quirky University Professor and voiced a character called Rolli Bobbler in an animated film from Finland called Quest For A Heart. He also performed a duet with Ricky Gervais in the Concert for Diana.

Crook played the leading role of Paul Callow in the British comedy film Three and Out,^[3] released on 25 April 2008.^[1][5] On 10 May 2008 he appeared in an episode of the BBC1 comedy/drama "Love Soup" playing the character Marty Cady and appeared in an episode of Andrew Davies' 2008 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit. He also provides his voice and movements to a character in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which began filming in January 2009 and will be released in 2011.^[8]

Crook will star in Wyndham Price's drama Abraham's Point as Comet Snape and appeared in City of Ember as Looper, and on TV will also be featured in the upcoming documentary Tattoos: A Scarred History (2009). He also did Big Brother Celebrity Hijack and recently appeared in an ITV drama "Demons" (originally called "The Last Van Helsing") as a vampire named Dr. Gladiolus Hadilus Tradius Thrip. In January 2009, Crook featured in the second and third episodes of the third series of the E4 hit teen cult drama Skins. In the show Crook played psychotic Bristol gangster Johnny White. He has appeared in Merlin, for the first episode of the second season, as a man named Cedric, who tries to take Merlin's job as Arthur's right-hand man.

Theatre

Crook played Billy Bibbit in the 2004 London West End production of the stage play of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest opposite Christian Slater,^[4] and in 2006 he appeared in The Exonerated at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.

He starred in director Ian Rickson's production of The Seagull opposite Kristen Scott Thomas, as the troubled writer Konstantin.^[1] Starting on Broadway, it transferred to the Royal Court Theatre in London's West End theatre in February/March 2007, for which he earned a nomination from the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.^[9] In December 2008 he finished the Broadway run of The Seagull at the Walter Kerr Theatre.^[1]

From July 15 through to August 15, 2009 Mackenzie appeared at the Royal Court Theatre in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem.^[10]

Mackenzie is scheduled to take part in a fundraising event, called We Are One, a celebration of tribal peoples, in aid of indigenous rights organization Survival International, taking place at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on Sunday 18 April 2010. The evening will be a performance of tribal prose and poetry from some of the UK and Hollywood's leading actors and musicians. The event was created and directed by Mark Rylance.^[11]

Other work

Crook has directed a music video for the London electro band Paw Paw. (His sister Zoe is one of the band members) The stop motion animation video accompanies the band's debut single 'Wired OK', released on 16 July 2007 on Albino Recordings.^[12]

Crook appeared as a postman in the music video for Paul McCartney's single "Dance Tonight" alongside Golden Globe award-winning actress Natalie Portman. The video for the song was directed by Michel Gondry and was posted exclusively on YouTube on 22 May 2007.

Crook has a deal with publisher Faber to illustrate and write a children's book.^[4] His first one, Fairy Tale, is due for release in 2010. His second book will be Ragetti's Secret Diary which will also be released in 2010. (It has recently been taken off Amazon, indicating that it will be released later than the expected date of 2009).

Crook teamed up with the writers of Modern Toss and footwear giant Kickers in 2009 to provide voiceovers for a new series of comedy cartoons called Random Bandits, which are featured online at the Kickers MySpace.

Personal life

Crook and his wife Lindsay, a former chef and advertising executive, reside in the North London suburb of Muswell Hill, in Peter Sellers' former semi-detached house.^[13]

He has said of the house, “There’s a huge beech tree at the bottom of the garden that Sellers planted. The neighbours want me to chop it down because it casts a shadow over their gardens but I won’t. I like the fact that he is pissing off the neighbours from beyond the grave.”

Crook and his wife were married in April 2001, and have a son, Jude Michael, born 17 January 2003, and a daughter, Scout Elizabeth, born 24 December 2007. Their third child is expected in late Summer, 2010.^{[citation needed]}

As a teenager, he inherited a rare breeding pair of Mediterranean Spur-thighed Tortoises, leading to his hobby of breeding chelonians.^[5]. In January 2010 on the Andrew Marr show, Crook revealed that he himself provides the tortoises used in his new play 'Jerusalem', taking them from his own herd.

Crook drives a black Toyota Prius. A car lover and environmentalist, when considering buying a Ferrari, he watched a 'particularly abhorrent' episode of the BBC's Top Gear, and decided instead to buy an 8-acre piece of Essex woodland and heath, which he purchased in 2008 and to donate several thousand Euros to charities for the blind.^[5][13]. Never keen to flaunt his charity work, he has said:

'I can imagine the situation where if people start to find out that I donate I will be lumped in with the Tarby and Brucie set. Before I know it I will be wearing a Pringle jumper and driven around in a golf cart all day. That's not the way I want to live'.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

• Mackenzie's official website
• Mackenzie Crook at the Internet Movie Database