From Cracked.com’s 5 Celebrities Who Got Famous for by Being Obsessed Fan Boys
#2. The Geek Who Would Be Doctor Who
Started Out As:
A young, obsessed Doctor Who fan whose schoolteachers had to tell him to shut up about it.
But Became:
The Doctor.
Recently, Doctor Who won a victory over Star Trek by becoming the longest-running science fiction series ever. Twice as many actors have played the Doctor over its entire run as have played James Bond. All the way back in the ’70s, the role belonged to Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor), and his biggest fan in the universe was a geeky kid named David McDonald.
And McDonald was a megafan to an extent that few men could begin to realize. As a child in school, it was all he ever wrote about, to the point where his teacher had to tell him to stop before she had to fail him. His most treasured possession was the stripy Doctor Who scarf his grandmother knitted him.
But he was a talented kid, even if he channeled all that talent into incessantly ranting about Doctor Who (a teacher still has one of his essays about the Doctor, titled “Intergalactic Overload,” in which McDonald talked about becoming obsessed with the thought of being the Time Lord himself). And where most kids eventually drop their fantasy of growing up to be, say, a Jedi, David McDonald stuck to his guns and joined acting school. Only, because they already had a guy named David McDonald, he changed his name to something that a lot of nerds will find instantly familiar: David Tennant.
Tennant worked hard, forging himself a successful career in Shakespearean stage productions, until one day, while recording a radio play, he learned of a project that was being recorded next door: a Doctor Who animation being produced in an attempt to revive the series after a 14-year hiatus. This was Tennant’s big break. He crashed the production and managed somehow to convince the director to give him a small role. Now that his foot was in the door, he was able to audition for the role he was born to play once the series geared up again. And guess what? He lost to Christopher Eccleston.
Oh, but they gave Tennant the role a year later, when Eccleston quit. And Tennant went on to be voted the best version of the Doctor ever by fans, which makes sense, because he knew the character better than anyone in the history of the universe. As if that wasn’t a big enough screw you to the realists who mocked his obsession, he also married the daughter of Peter Davison, the fifth Doctor. Because apparently his good fortune just wasn’t implausible enough already.