It's Peter Capaldi's Birthday, Here's Five Times He Was The Best

By Riley Silverman | Celebrity | April 14, 2016 |

By Riley Silverman | Celebrity | April 14, 2016 |

58 years ago, or 4.5 billion depending on how you do the maths, this bright shining angel was born:

In honor of his birthday, here’s a few of our favorite examples of times when Peter Capaldi was just a delight.

1.) Malcolm Tucker

Before he was The Doctor, Peter’s most iconic role was as this British government spin doctor on BBC’s The Thick Of It, as well in the *sort of* connected *sort of* not film In The Loop. Fans of Veep who haven’t checked out this series from creator and former showrunner Armando Iannucci owe it to themselves to check out both the show and the movie. Capaldi’s Tucker is the clear stand out character though, and here’s a decent compilation of some of his most heartwarming and emotionally stirring moments from both:

2.) This Time He Recorded A Personal Message to a 9 Year Old Autistic Boy.

The actors who play the Doctor tend to be very active in making sure their young fans know how much they appreciate them, and that often means visiting children in hospitals or sending them personal messages. There are a bunch of these videos to choose from, including several visits to refugee camps, but this is a short, sweet clip that according to the father of the little boy it was sent to, “This arrived just before Thomas’ nanny’s funeral and helped him to deal with his grief in a profound way.”

3.) Talking About How Much He Loves His Wife

In an interview for The Standard in the U.K., Peter said a ton of great things about sexism in the film industry, including being critical of the age disparity in male and female actors in film. But the sweetest moment of the interview was when he started talking about his wife, producer Elaine Collins, and how important she is to him. Die hard Whovians are likely already aware that his Doctor wears a wedding ring because Peter refuses to take his off, a gesture to symbolize that she stuck by him when he was still a struggling actor.

“I ask him where he would go if he could time-travel back to any part of his life. “When you’re middle-aged, like I am, the past becomes more colourful,” he says, and yet despite the technicolour craziness of his current existence he eventually alights on the moment in 1983 when he first met Collins working for Paines Plough Theatre Company: “I just loved meeting my wife. We were both in a show together so that was terribly exciting. I’d like to re-live that.”

4. All The Times He Was Just The Biggest Fanboy

There is likely no bigger Doctor Who fan alive than Peter Capaldi himself, and in the months building up to his debut as ole number 12, old fan letters and artwork he’d created during the classic series’ run started to surface. Here he is being forced to hear his most embarrassing fan letters on the Graham Norton Show. Oh and Denzel Washington is just hanging out for this too.

5. This Speech From Series 9 About The Futility of War

Look, if you’re still waiting for series 9 of Doctor Who to appear on Amazon, then this is the place where you should jump off because it is about to get spoilery up in here.

But here’s a scene from “The Zygon Inversion” where Peter does what can only be described as “all the acting.” The Twelfth Doctor isn’t known for long dramatic monologues the way that Eleven was, but this is one of the rare exceptions. Already other Doctors are being asked to read the speech at conventions, and Peter himself has had to perform versions of it live as well. Each Doctor has at least one iconic moment that they are remembered for, and on that front, Capaldi has this speech, delivered to the Zygon known as Bonnie, currently taking on the form of Clara Oswald, just as she prepares to push a button that will set off a war between her people and the humans. He also manages to scold Kate Stewart of UNIT in a way that lands, which is no small feat.