Douglas Henshall

Douglas Henshall was born on November 19, 1965 in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother was a nurse and his father a salesman. While studying in Barrhead High School, he joined the Scottish Youth Theatre. After graduation, he moved to London to be trained at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. He married Croatian writer Tena Štivičić in February 2010, and their daughter was born in 2016.

He was passionate about tennis as a youngster and used to play the sport in his teenage. He still loves watching and playing tennis. He also likes cooking, going to the cinema, playing chess, and watching football. He is a supporter of the Scottish football team St. Mirren and the London team Chelsea.

When Douglas Henshall was studying in London, he started acting in theater as well. He received acclaim for his performances in plays like ‘Life of Stuff’, staged at the Donmar Warehouse in 1993, and ‘American Buffalo’, staged in 1997. After he returned to Glasgow, he joined the pro-independence theater group 7:84.

In 1993, he appeared in six episodes of ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’, a British television serial written by Dennis Potter. In the same year, he did two episodes of ‘The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles’, an American television series aired on ABC, and one episode of ‘Screen One’, a British television drama series, produced by BBC. One of his first successful films was the 1995 flick ‘Angels and Insects’, where he played the character of Edgar.

In 2002, Douglas returned to the London stage, where he was featured as Michael Bakunin in Tom Stoppard's play, ‘The Coast of Utopia’, at the National Theatre. In the same year, he played Daniel Stone in ‘Silent Cry’, a British television crime thriller film, first broadcast on Channel 5.

In 2011, he performed the role of Emma’s lover in Harold Pinter's ‘Betrayal’ at the Comedy Theatre in London. In 2012, he was cast as Oliver Cromwell in the premiere of the play ‘55 Days’. In the same year, he appeared as Augustus Cribben in ‘The Secret of Crickley Hall’, and in the ITV television film adaptation of Ian Rankin's novel ‘Doors Open’. In 2013, he started playing the role of Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez in the BBC show ‘Shetland.’

He played the lead role in ‘In Plain Sight’ (2016), a Scottish television drama series about the crimes committed by the serial killer Peter Manuel in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in the 1950s. Douglas played Max Schumacher in the world premiere of National Theatre's 2017 production of ‘Network’, directed by Ivo van Hove. The play was based on Lee Hall's adaptation of the 1976 Academy Award-winning film of the same name by Paddy Chayefsky.