David Graham (actor)

David Graham (actor)
David Graham (born 11 July 1925) is an English actor. He is best known for voicing the Daleks in Doctor Who, Gordon Tracy, Brains, Aloysius Parker and Kyrano in Thunderbirds and Grandpa Pig in Peppa Pig. He played the role of Big Brother in the "1984" television Super Bowl advert to introduce the Apple Macintosh computer.
Life and career
Graham was born in London on 11 July 1925. His sister had married a G.I. and had moved to the United States, and his uncle had run away there, and so he became an actor after leaving his Orthodox Jewish household. He trained in New York City, at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Sanford Meisner, following service in the Royal Air Force as a radar mechanic.
He returned to England and began his theatre career, his breakout role being as Givola in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, alongside Leonard Rossiter. A friend of his, Christopher Benjamin, recommended the role to him. He was then recommended by director Michael Blakemore to audition for Laurence Olivier’s theatre company, eventually appearing alongside him in Saturday Sunday Monday, using an Italian accent.
While playing characters in TV series Private Investigator in 1958, Graham met Gerry Anderson, who was planning his first puppet productions. Graham said that he could pull off accents well, which led to his first voiceover role in Four Feather Falls, as Grandpa Twink, who he based off of Walter Brennan. He would subsequently voice Dr. Beaker, Zarin and Mitch the Monkey in Supercar, Mat Matic and Lieutenant Ninety in Fireball XL5 and various guest characters in Stingray. Graham would also play Johnny in Crossroads to Crime, a live-action film Anderson directed.
In 1963 he became the voice of the Daleks in Doctor Who, alongside Peter Hawkins, who devised the way they spoke. He believed Peter would always play superior and higher-pitched Daleks, while he voiced with a lower-pitch. He voiced the Daleks in all four of their major First Doctor era appearances, as well as the two 1960s feature films, departing due to other commitments, although he and Peter would remain lifelong friends. David also voiced the Mechanoids and played the onscreen role of Charlie in The Gunfighters.
In 1965 Graham became the voices of Gordon Tracy, Brains, Parker and Kyrano in Thunderbirds, as well as its film sequels: Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6. He did not believe Brains had a stutter, claiming that he was instead trying to find the words to explain his latest ideas excitedly. He based the voice of Parker off of a waiter at the King’s Arms pub in Cookham, and he and Ray Barrett shared many of the guest villains. Although he was not highly paid for production, the many repeats earned him a lot more, and Parker became Anderson’s favourite voice.
Between 1975 and 1977 he was part of the Radio Drama Company. In 1979 he played Professor Kerensky in the Doctor Who story City of Death. He, Peter Hawkins and Peter’s wife Rosemary Miller provided voices together in the English dub of German animated film Stowaways on the Ark. In 2004 Graham became the voice of Grandpa Pig in Peppa Pig, having known creator Mark Baker from when he was younger. The following year he played Albert Einstein in a Horizon docudrama, for which he was very proud that the BBC would select him to play the lead role.
In 2009, Graham began playing Edward Elgar in Stirring the Spirit, for which he thoroughly researched the composer, and would reprise the role many times over the next decade. In 2015 he reprised his role as Parker in Thunderbirds Are Go, a computer-animated revival of the original series. Although Kayvan Novak took over as Brains, Graham had wanted to reprise that role as well. Most of his scenes were filmed with only Rosamund Pike also recording alongside him, as Lady Penelope.
In April 2021, Graham announced his retirement from his Thunderbirds characters. In December, actor George Layton, a longtime friend of Graham's, announced on Twitter that Graham had suffered a stroke six months earlier and was unable to leave his home in London. However, Layton stated that Graham was recovering by performing voice-overs of his characters.
Filmography
References
External links
Official website (Wayback Machine)
1925 births
Living people
Apple Inc. advertising
British expatriates in the United States
English male film actors
English male television actors
English male voice actors
Male actors from London
20th-century English male actors
21st-century English male actors
20th-century Royal Air Force personnel