Guardian profile: David Tennant, our favourite Doctor … his time has come

Regularly acclaimed as the nation's favourite Time Lord, the former Doctor Who star David Tennant is accustomed to travelling through space and time. But even if he had a real-life Tardis it is unlikely that he would travel beyond the here and now, such is his ubiquity across screen and stage.

From his lead role in the ITV murder mystery Broadchurch to his return to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Richard II, via leading parts in BBC dramas The Politician's Husband and The Escape Artist, Tennant's tilt at world domination is enough to make the Daleks jealous.

Tennant will return to face the old foe in Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special – reunited with his companion, Billie Piper, alongside incumbent Matt Smith and guest star John Hurt. Broadcast in 3D and released simultaneously in cinemas on 23 November, it promises to be the TV event of the year.

Then he is off to crack the US in a remake of Broadchurch for Fox. He would also like to direct – he has a long gestating theatre production of A Midsummer Night's Dream – but as he told the Guardian last week: "It's going to have to wait for now."

"There are very few actors who can be so chameleon-like and inhabit roles in the way he does," says David Wolstencroft, who wrote the legal thriller The Escape Artist, which ended on BBC1 this week.

"He pulls off this phenomenal depth of emotional range and brings a laser-like precision in the way that he approaches a role. He is very well prepared and raises everyone's game. I would cast him in everything."

Broadchurch, in which Tennant played granite-faced detective Alec Hardy, investigating the death of a child in a close-knit seaside town, drew comparisons with Danish crime drama The Killing; it also turned perceptions of ITV contemporary drama on their head.

Writer Chris Chibnall, who previously worked with Tennant on an episode of Doctor Who and the BBC drama United, about the 1958 Munich air disaster, says: "Whenever I talk to David about a part he always wants to be pushed, he wants to do something different.

"His character in Broadchurch is pretty much the polar opposite of the Doctor but he does it in very subtle ways. It was like he had slowed down his metabolism – he walked slower, he even blinked slower – deliberately calibrating his performance in ways that you wouldn't really even notice."

Chibnall has scripted the pilot episode of a 10-part US adaptation of Broadchurch, which will also return for a second series to ITV (although Tennant's involvement is not confirmed).

In the US, he will play the "same role, but reimagined," says Chibnall. "There's no sense of entitlement, David has a real work ethic. He has empathy with lots of people and can bring humanity to the most complex, dark characters, but can also find good in people without it seeming weak or uninteresting."

Tennant set his heart on playing the Doctor aged just three, after watching Jon Pertwee, the third doctor, regenerate into the fourth, Tom Baker. His affection for the show was encapsulated in a school essay he wrote, aged 14, entitled Intergalactic Overdose.

But if the nation fell in love with Tennant playing the Doctor from 2005 to 2010, then arguably his biggest break came a year before when, as a virtual unknown, he landed the lead role in BBC3's bawdy mini series, Casanova, created by Russell T Davies – who had just overseen the return of Doctor Who to BBC1, with Christopher Eccleston in the starring role.

Tennant ended a search for a Casanova which had seemed exhausted. "It was very difficult to cast because it was sexy and sexual but we had written [the role] wiser than it might have been," remembers Davies.

"We auditioned every single actor in the world and it just wasn't working. I put in his VHS tape and went to the kitchen to make a tea and remember hearing his voice saying my dialogue exactly as I wanted it."

Damien Timmer, executive producer on Casanova, recalls: "There were raised eyebrows in parts of the BBC as he was still a relative unknown. But it quickly became clear that he was very special."

Davies knew that Tennant was a Doctor Who fan – he had played various minor roles in audio adaptations of the drama – and took the actor, and Timmer, to a Soho screening room to give them an early look at its return.

When Eccleston stepped down after one series, says Davies, Tennant was the "literally automatic" choice.

"It was a joyous moment when I asked him. He took a deep breath and burst out laughing. The first thing he said was: 'I want a coat down to here' and pointed to his ankle." And that was what he got.

Tennant has since recalled how it "took a bit of getting used to" the pressure of being the star of Doctor Who, "a world where everyone is staring at you. You have to keep questioning whether it's worth it. It's not a bad thing – it's a huge privilege – but it also feels like a bit of a responsibility".

"It's a very, very hard thing to cope with becoming that famous very quickly," says Davies. "To deal with such heat of publicity you need to have your wits about you and look after yourself. He did that from the start."

Born in Bathgate, west Lothian, the third child of a former moderator of the Church of Scotland, Tennant began his theatre career after he became, aged 17, the youngest student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Required to change his name by Equity (he was born David McDonald and opted for the surname of Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant) he later joined the socialist theatre group 7:84.

But TV parts did not come easily. He once joked – after 16 auditions – that he was the "only Scottish actor alive who hasn't been in Taggart".

He headed south in 1993, lodging in London with a friend, the former Fast Show star Arabella Weir, and made his name on the stage in various Royal Shakespeare Company productions and Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, at the National Theatre, in 1995.

He earned an Olivier nomination for his role in Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, at the Donmar Warehouse, in 2002, a part which brought him to the attention of writer Peter Bowker.

Two years later, he appeared in Bowker's BBC1 musical comedy drama, Blackpool, opposite David Morrissey.

"There was something about David which reminded me of the young Peter Capaldi, which is ironic given that Capaldi is now taking over the role of the doctor," says Bowker.

"With David it's his intelligence that makes him sexy. Obviously he's a good looking boy and in good shape, but fundamentally it's his intelligence, he is curious and full of ideas. He is also rock solid Labour, which is always a plus."

Tennant, who has bemoaned the absence of more political drama on TV, did the voiceover for a Labour party broadcast in 2010 and has said it is "no secret I'm not a fan of [David] Cameron".

He is also an enthusiastic unionist. "I had no great sense of nationalism when I was in Scotland," he said two years ago. "I could never understand why the SNP were banging on about it."

He is married to Georgia Moffett, daughter of ex-Time Lord Peter Davison. The couple have three children and celebrated their wedding at a New Year's Eve party at the Globe theatre in 2011, attended by Stephen Fry and Gordon Brown.

But he is protective of his private life, saying: "I understand there's an interest, and I don't want to feed it."

Tennant has a reputation for being polite and chatty with a disarming line in self-deprecation and an undergraduate's air (although, now 42, that might be pushing it).

His big screen career (St Trinian's 2, The Decoy Bride, Fright Night) has failed to garner the plaudits of his TV work (Recovery, Single Father, Spies in Warsaw) although Tennant once pointed out that the poorly-received Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger, made three times its budget "so we have to wonder what criteria we're working on".

His US TV pilot Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, in which he played a top litigator who becomes crippled by panic attacks, was not picked up, but the Fox adaptation of Broadchurch – plus the Doctor Who 50th special, which will simulcast on BBC America (and around the world), will introduce him to a stateside audience.

Tennant's extravagantly bewigged Richard II, which ends on Saturday 16 November, marked a return to the RSC five years after his triumphant Hamlet, and reunited him with the company's now artistic director, Gregory Doran.

When it was broadcast live in 364 UK cinemas on Wednesday 13 November, the play generated more than £1m in box office receipts. It will be streamed into schools across the UK on Friday 15 November.

Jane Featherstone, chief executive of Broadchurch's producer, Kudos, says: "I can't think of another actor in the last 12 or 18 months who has achieved that range of roles and accents and performances, and connected with the audience in each one. It is remarkable."

Screenwriter Paula Milne, who wrote The Politician's Husband, says Tennant can convey "a kind of damaged humanity … although he may not have been that likeable you felt he had gone on a journey where he became that person".

She adds: "Sometimes when you write a very tough, muscular character the actor says, 'yes, but will they like me?' That is a question he never asked. He took it on and delivered it."

She previously discussed another project with Tennant, about a "cross-dressing, cocaine-snorting therapist". Despite his enthusiasm, it proved "too out there" for the BBC or Channel 4, Milne recalls. "He was up for it. He read it and said he would love to do it." Perhaps, in a parallel universe, he still will.

Potted profile

Born

18 April 1971 in Bathgate, West Lothian, the third child of a former Church of Scotland moderator.

Education

Paisley Grammar School. From 1988 he studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, then joined agitprop theatre company 7:84.

Career

1996 Made his Royal Shakespeare Company debut in 1996 in As You Like It.

2002 Role in Lobby Hero at the Donmar Warehouse earns an Olivier nomination.

2004 Plays vicar in the BBC Trollope adaptation He Knew He Was Right. Lead role in comedy-drama, Blackpool.

2005 Takes title role in Casanova and succeeds Christopher Eccleston in Doctor Who. Stars as Barty Crouch Jr in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

2008 Returns to the RSC to play Hamlet.

2009 US TV pilot, Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, not picked up by NBC.

2010 Regenerates from Doctor Who.

2010-12 TV roles include Single Father and Munich air disaster drama United.

2013 Stars in Broadchurch, The Politician's Husband and The Escape Artist. Returns to RSC for Richard II and appears in Doctor Who 50th anniversary special.

What they say

Russell T Davies: "It's a very, very hard thing to cope with becoming that famous very quickly. To deal with such heat of publicity you need to have your wits about you and look after yourself. He did that from the start."