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John Barrowman (born 11th March 1967 in Glasgow) appeared as Captain Jack Harkness, beginning in "The Empty Child." Barrowman also portrayed Captain Jack in a 13-part Doctor Who spin-off series titled Torchwood (an anagram of "Doctor Who"), which premiered in Autumn 2006 and returned for a second series in 2008. Barrowman's character was also featured in three episodes of Doctor Who in 2007 and for another two again in 2008.
Barrowman was raised in Joliet, Illinois, and graduated from Joliet West High School in 1985. He is the son of a plant manager of the former Caterpillar Inc. tractor factory in Joliet. While still in high school, he won parts in several musical productions while still a freshman. Between 1983 and 1985 he performed in productions of Hello, Dolly!, Oliver!, Camelot, L'il Abner and Anything Goes.
He attended university in San Diego, and returned to the United Kingdom in 1990. He has appeared in several West End musicals, including Anything Goes, Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, Matador, Hair, Grease! and The Phantom of the Opera. He has also appeared in the West End in non-musical dramas, such as Rope and the 2005 production of A Few Good Men, in which Barrowman starred opposite Rob Lowe. Most recently he starred in Cinderella at the New Wimbledon Theatre for the 2005-6 Christmas season.
He has played the role of Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard in the West End and, briefly, on Broadway. His only other Broadway credit is the Stephen Sondheim revue Putting It Together (1999–2000).
Barrowman appeared in the first run of the BBC children's variety show Live & Kicking in 1993-1994, co-hosting the show with Andi Peters and Emma Forbes, before moving on to The Movie Game, a television game show.
He is probably best known in the United States for starring roles in several short-lived prime-time soap operas such as Titans with Yasmine Bleeth in 2000 and Central Park West, as well as the low-budget cult film Shark Attack 3.
Barrowman's musical abilities have been featured in film: he had a duet with Kevin Kline in the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely, and he can be seen singing "Springtime for Hitler" in the film of Mel Brooks' The Producers, based on the Broadway adaptation of the original movie. John Barrowman also narrates the Monster files on the Doctor Who official site.
Barrowman, who is openly gay, has been with his partner, British architect Scott Gill, since 1991. Despite this long-standing relationship, Barrowman told The Herald of Glasgow that he had no plans to marry, saying, "Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system that hates me?". However, he and Gill became civil partners, but as Barrowman explained when the couple were interviewed by Attitude magazine, they do not want to call this a marriage "We're just going to sign the civil register. We're not going to have any ceremony because I'm not a supporter of the word marriage for a gay partnership.".
Outside of Doctor Who and Torchwood, Barrowman has become somewhat ubiquitous on UK television, hosting everything from morning chat shows to musical retrospectives and also lending his talents to charity events such as Children in Need (he introduced the broadcast of Time Crash in 2007). He also conducted one of David Tennant's first television interviews after being named the new Doctor (more than a year before Barrowman found himself returning to Doctor Who opposite Tennant). Although less prominent outside the UK, in the summer of 2008 he was one of the judges on the CBC talent competition series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?.
Barrowman is an avid Doctor Who fan beyond his work on the series, and this has been made evident in several DVD featurettes. In the Season 1 Doctor Who DVD set it's learned that Barrowman received a radio controlled Dalek for his birthday, and in the Season 3 set both he and fellow Who fan David Tennant make reference to the fact Barrowman's dog was named Tegan, after Tegan Jovanka. The blooper reel for Series 2 of Torchwood reveals that he has the Doctor Who theme as his ringtone when his mobile phone rings during filming.
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