Mackenzie Crook

 ( Official Website ) 

Crook attended Sutton-at-Hone Primary School and then Wilmington Grammar School for Boys. As there was no drama department at his grammar school, he joined a local youth theatre. He has said that he failed his A-level because he "completely lost interest" after his . In the summers, he spent time at his uncle's tobacco farm in northern Zimbabwe, where he developed a love for painting.

Crook's first jobs included working at a Pizza Hut restaurant and at Halfords, where he felt he was "waiting for real life to start".

After moving to London when he was in his early twenties, Crook worked on the comedy circuit, appearing as two characters he created, Mr. Bagshawe and Charlie Cheese. He went on to appear in shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he was spotted by Bob Mortimer.

In 1998 Crook was offered his first major television role as a comedy sketch contributor on Channel 4's The Eleven O'Clock Show, from which he was later dropped. He was later a member of the main cast of the BBC sketch show TV to Go in 2001.

In late 1999, he hosted the short-lived ITV1 show Comedy Café as his Charlie Cheese character. The show, made by Channel X for ITV1, had Cheese interviewing celebrities about their latest live tour, book, album or film release.

In 2001 Crook auditioned for the role of Gareth Keenan in Ricky Gervais' and Stephen Merchant's popular mockumentary The Office. Though it was originally written for a larger, thuggish actor, Crook won the role, and in 2001 he was nominated for a British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Breakthrough Artist.

Crook was featured in (2003), (2006), and (2007), as Ragetti, a pirate with a comically ill-fitting wooden false eye, who is teamed with Pintel (Lee Arenberg).

Crook has appeared in adverts as the character for Visa and M&M's. He has also been heard as himself in adverts for MTV and Film4, and as a voiceover artiste for motor insurance company Green Flag in 2007. In 2010, he narrated an advertisement for electrical retailer Currys.

Crook appeared as Launcelot Gobbo in Michael Radford's 2004 film adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and had a minor role in the 2004 film Finding Neverland as a theatre usher. His other film appearances include The Gathering (2003) and The Brothers Grimm (2005).

He has starred in three of Tim Plester and Ben Gregor's short films: as Gary Tibbs in Ant Muzak (2002), as Servalan in Blake's Junction 7 (2004), and as Glorious George in World of Wrestling (2006), all released on DVD. He has done voice-over in the TV series Modern Toss, was featured in I Want Candy as Mr. Dulberg, a quirky university professor; and voiced Rolli Bobbler in the English version of an animated film from Finland called Quest for a Heart (original Finnish name Röllin Sydän). He also performed a duet with Ricky Gervais in the 2007 Concert for Diana.

Crook played the leading role of Paul Callow in the comedy film Three and Out, released on 25 April 2008. On 10 May 2008 he appeared in an episode of the BBC1 comedy/drama Love Soup playing the character Marty Cady and appeared in an episode of Andrew Davies' 2008 BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit. He also provided his voice and movements to a character in Steven Spielberg's , which began filming in January 2009 and was released in 2011.

Crook starred in Wyndham Price's drama Abraham's Point as Comet Snape and appeared in City of Ember as Looper, and on TV was featured in the documentary Tattoos: A Scarred History (2009). He also appeared in and the ITV Network drama Demons (originally titled The Last Van Helsing) as the vampire Gladiolus Hadilus Tradius Thrip. In January 2009, Crook assisted in the second and third episodes of the third series of the E4 teen drama Skins, where he played psychotic Bristol gangster Johnny White. In September 2009, he appeared in Merlin, for the first episode of the second season, as Cedric.

In November 2010, Crook starred in A Reluctant Tragic Hero, a comic play by Anton Chekhov, on the Sky Arts channel, which also starred Johnny Vegas, with whom he also starred in 2004's Sex Lives of the Potato Men, a film about the sexual antics of a group of potato delivery men in Birmingham. Crook played Corporal Buckley, a brutal career soldier, in Jimmy McGovern's Accused, broadcast on BBC1 in November 2010.BBC Press Office, 10 October 2010, Accused During the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con it was announced that Crook would play the role of Orell in the third season of Game of Thrones.

Crook also wrote, directed and starred in the television comedy series Detectorists, which was first broadcast on BBC Four on 2 October 2014. Filmed in the countryside of Suffolk and the market town of Framlingham, the show is a gently humorous and affectionate portrayal of a pair of metal-detecting enthusiasts, Andy (Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones), and their colleagues in the fictional Danebury Metal Detecting Club. In 2015, Crook won a British Academy Television Craft Award for Best Writing in a Comedy Series for the show, whilst the series won the British Academy Television Award for Best Situation Comedy. A second series was broadcast in the UK in October/November 2015. A Christmas special was broadcast on 23 December 2015. In 2017 the third and final series of Detectorists was broadcast. A final special episode was released for Christmas 2022.

Crook played the role of Nestor of Maddox in the television fantasy-comedy series Yonderland, broadcast on Sky One, which starred and was written by the cast of the educational historical comedy series Horrible Histories. He plays the father of the main character Debbie, played by Martha Howe-Douglas, and appears in three episodes of series 2: episodes 1, 2 and 4.