David Schofield (actor)

David Schofield
Schofield in 2011
Born	1951 (age 65–66) Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1972–present

David Schofield (born 1951) is an English actor. He has appeared in numerous television programmes and feature films during his career.

Schofield was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, one of ten children in a working-class family. David attended St. John Fisher and Thomas More R.C. Primary School, along with his brother, Peter. His first acting experience was at Manchester Boys' School at the age of 12. In 1967 he was accepted as student assistant stage manager at a local repertory theatre. He started on the lowest step of the ladder and worked in every department as a prop-maker, sound-man, writer, stage sweeper, waiter and tea-maker, putting in 14-hour days, six days a week. After two seasons, at the age of 19, he became a student of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which he left early to pursue his path as a working actor.

He made a successful career in television, earning numerous credits in popular TV series such as Footballers' Wives and Holby City among many other TV productions. On the big screen he is best known as the paranoid darts player in the Slaughtered Lamb in An American Werewolf In London (1981), and his other films include The Dogs of War (1980), Tree of Hands (1989), The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Anna Karenina (1997), Gladiator (2000), From Hell (2001), and as Mr. Mercer in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. He has also appeared in Valkyrie (2008) as anti-Hitler conspirator Erwin von Witzleben, The Wolfman (2010), F (2010), Burke and Hare (2010), Lord of Tears (2013) and as Peter Carmichael in the suspense thriller Last Passenger (2013). On TV he appeared in Jekyll & Hyde (1990) starring Michael Caine, and played DCS John Salway in the award-winning BBC series Our Friends in the North in 1996. In 2008, he starred as Kirill, in the web series of the same name. In 2009 Schofield guest starred as King Alined in the BBC fantasy drama series Merlin. In 2011 he played the sinister Police Sergeant Foley in Hugo Blick's The Shadow Line, a seven-part series for BBC Two. In autumn 2015, he was seen as Odin in the episode "The Girl Who Died" in the ninth series of the BBC1 series Doctor Who. In 2016 he appears as Vivan Wolsey in the BBC series' Father Brown episode 4.1 "The Mask of the Demon" and The Coroner episode 2.6 "Life".