"Mercifully, I haven't been type-cast and it opened more doors than it closed. I was never bored, but I wanted to make sure I left before it became a job."
So what did the manic and acclaimed tenth Doctor do next? After leaving Doctor Who in 2010 after four years in the high-profile role, there was a brilliant, sell-out Hamlet on the London stage, radio plays, audiobook readings, voice-overs, a surprisingly dud film, an unsuccessful attempt at an American TV series, and the voice of Charles Darwin in the Aardman animation The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. "I'm ridiculously proud of that. It was a real treat," says David Tennant.
He's chipper, grinning, boyishly enthusiastic as ever, even though he's 41. If he weren't so tall, elegant, slim, and fashionably unshaven, he'd resemble a goblin, with his bright, expressive eyes that sometimes seem a little overwhelming on screen. "Do they?" he asks. "Well, you can only work with what you have."
He takes success and failure in his stride and explains, over a glass of tap water, that his career is a battle for challenges. He's just finished filming the lead in The Spies of Warsaw for BBC4, adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and is due to film a new ITV1 drama series called Broadchurch.
"I'm always looking for a new project. There's a kind of exhaustive adrenaline push, which is alarming and overwhelming, but very motivating. It's fear of failure: is this the one where they discover I don't deserve to be at the party? I wait for someone to say, 'You've had a good run. Now it's time to go.' I admire other actors' work and then see mine and it seems false and crass. As an actor you put yourself up for appraisal on a regular basis and ask for your insecurities to be tweaked. No wonder I'm a nervous wreck," he laughs.
In fact few actors seem less neurotic. He's famously discreet - married on New Year's Eve to an actress, Georgia Moffett, 27, who he met on Doctor Who in 2008. They have a daughter, Olive, born in March last year, and he's adopted her ten-year-old son Tyson. He's had one or two skirmishes with the press: "I've had a go at them. I'm not suggesting my phone was hacked, although it would make sense of certain moments in my life when I was surprised about how some information became public.
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http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-06-17/david-tennant-on-leaving-doctor-who,-true-love-and-living-in-the-public-eye
