- published: 30 Apr 2009
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David Schofield is an English actor who was born in Wythenshawe, Manchester, Cheshire in 1951. He has appeared in numerous television programmes and feature films during his career.
Schofield was one of ten children in a working class family from Wythenshawe, Manchester. David attended SS John Fisher and Thomas More R.C. Primary School, along with his brother, Peter. His first acting experience was at Manchester Boys' School at the age of 12. In 1967 he was accepted as student assistant stage manager at a local repertory theatre. He started on the lowest step of the ladder and worked in every department as a prop-maker, sound-man, writer, stage sweeper, waiter and tea-maker, putting in 14-hour days, six days a week. After two seasons, at the age of 19, he became a student of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, which he left early to pursue his path as a working actor.
He made a successful career in television, earning numerous credits in popular TV series such as Footballers' Wives and Holby City among many other TV productions. On the big screen David Schofield is best known as Senator Falco in Gladiator, as McQueen in From Hell, and as Mr. Mercer in Pirates of the Caribbean. For the BBC he played DCS John Salway in the award-winning Our Friends in the North. He played anti-Hitler conspirator Erwin von Witzleben in the film Valkyrie. In 2008, he starred as Kirill, in the web series of the same name. In 2009 Schofield guest starred as King Alined in the BBC fantasy drama series Merlin. Schofield stars in the British low-budget thriller F. In 2011 he played the sinister Police Sergeant Foley in Hugo Blick's The Shadow Line, a seven-part series for BBC Two. However, to genre fans he is best-known as the paranoid darts player in the Slaughtered Lamb in An American Werewolf In London. He has also played Fergus in 'Burke and Hare' [5]