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Mark Gatiss (born October 17, 1966) is an English actor and writer.

Gatiss was born in Darlington, County Durham, England. He now lives in Islington, London, with his partner Ian and their dog Bunsen.

In 2006, Gatiss was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by the University of Huddersfield.

Contents 1 Performing 1.1 The League of Gentlemen 1.2 Other television work 1.3 Radio, stage and film 2 Writing 3 Bibliography 3.1 Novels 3.1.1 Doctor Who 3.1.2 Lucifer Box 3.2 Audio plays 3.2.1 Doctor Who 4 References 5 External links

He is best known as a member of the sketch comedy team The League of Gentlemen (along with fellow performers Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and co-writer Jeremy Dyson), which initially began as a stage act in 1995, transferred to BBC Radio 4 as On the Town with the League of Gentlemen in 1997 and then arrived on television on BBC Two in 1999. The latter has seen Gatiss and his colleagues awarded with a British Academy Television Award, a Royal Television Society Award and the prestigious Golden Rose of Montreux.

He met his League of Gentlemen co-writers and performers at Bretton Hall drama school in his late teens, which he began attending after finishing school and having spent a gap year travelling around Europe.

Outside of the League, Gatiss' television work has included writing for the 2001 revival of comic telefantasy Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and script editing the popular sketch show Little Britain in 2003, making guest appearances in both. Other acting appearances include the comedy-drama In the Red (BBC Two, 1999), the macabre sitcom Nighty Night (BBC Three, 2003), and the live 2005 remake of the classic sci-fi serial The Quatermass Experiment. 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 January 1, 2007.

He is also due to take an on-screen role in one episode of Doctor Who in 2007 (Proffesor Lazarus/ (Beast that appears in Trailer?) in The Lazarus Experiment),^[1] making him only the third person — after Glyn Jones and Victor Pemberton — and the first of the new series to both write for and act in the programme. Also in 2007 he will appear as Robert Louis Stevenson^[2] in Jekyll, a BBC One serial by his fellow Doctor Who scriptwriter Steven Moffat.^[3]

He appears frequently in BBC Radio productions, including the sci-fi comedy Nebulous and The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes story The Shameful Betrayal of Miss Emily Smith. He is also involved with theatre, having penned the play The Teen People in the early 1990s, and appeared in a successful run of the play 'Art' in 2003 at the Whitehall Theatre in London. In film, he has starred in Sex Lives of the Potato Men (2004) and had minor roles in Birthday Girl (2001), Bright Young Things (2003), Match Point (2005) and Starter for Ten (2006). The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, a film based on the television series, co-written by and starring Gatiss, was released in June 2005. He also plays the recurring character of Gold in the audio revivial of Sapphire and Steel produced by Big Finish Productions.

Gatiss is famously a long-time fan of the British television science-fiction series Doctor Who, preferring its style from the 1970s. Much of his writing has been devoted to the series, including the BBV video spin-off series P.R.O.B.E., four novels, two audio plays for Big Finish Productions and, fulfilling a lifelong dream, two episodes for the 2005-revived BBC television series. His first, The Unquiet Dead, aired on April 9, 2005; the second is The Idiot's Lantern, aired on May 27, 2006 as part of the second season. In addition, Gatiss is the narrator for the 2006 season of documentary series Doctor Who Confidential, replacing Simon Pegg. Gatiss is not writing an episode in the upcoming third season, but will instead appear in the episode The Lazarus Experiment, as a 76-year-old scientist who has developed a device that makes him look younger.

He also wrote and performed the comedy sketches The Web of Caves, The Kidnappers and The Pitch of Fear for the BBC's "Doctor Who Night" in 1999 with Little Britain's David Walliams, and played the Master in the Doctor Who Unbound play Sympathy for the Devil under the name "Sam Kisgart", a pseudonym he had previously used for a column in Doctor Who Magazine. (The pseudonym is an anagram of "Mark Gatiss", a nod to the Master who often used anagrams or translations of his title as false names, and to Anthony Ainley, who was sometimes credited under an anagram to conceal the Master's identity from the viewers.)

In mainstream print, Gatiss is responsible for an acclaimed biography of the film director James Whale. His first non-Doctor Who novel, The Vesuvius Club, was published in 2004, for which he was nominated in the category of Best Newcomer in the 2006 British Book Awards. A follow up, The Devil in Amber, was released on November 6. It transports the main character, Lucifer Box, from the Edwardian era in the first book to the roaring Twenties/Thirties.

On the release of The Devil in Amber, Gatiss gave an in-depth interview to stv about his writing and comedy work.

• Nightshade (ISBN 0-426-20376-3)
• St Anthony's Fire (ISBN 0-426-20423-9)
• The Roundheads (ISBN 0-563-40576-7)
• Last of the Gaderene (ISBN 0-563-55587-4)

• The Vesuvius Club (ISBN 0-7432-5706-5)
• The Devil in Amber (ISBN 0-7432-5709-X)

• Phantasmagoria
• Invaders from Mars
• Sympathy For the Devil (as Sam Kisgart)

• Mark Gatiss at the Internet Movie Database
• Sam Kisgart - Memoirs of a Gentleman
• Nightshade ebook
• Mark Gatiss interview at stv.tv

Persondata
NAME	Gatiss, Mark
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	TV and radio writer and actor
DATE OF BIRTH	17 October 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH	Darlington, County Durham, UK
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH