- published: 16 Jul 2011
- views: 1315
Jack Davenport (born 1 March 1973) is an English actor, best known for his roles in the television series This Life, Coupling and as James Norrington in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. He has also appeared in many other Hollywood films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley. More recently, Davenport was part of the ensemble cast of characters in the drama series FlashForward and Smash.
Davenport, the son of actors Nigel Davenport and Maria Aitken, was born in Merton, Oxfordshire and lived in Ibiza for the first seven years of his life. His uncle is writer and disgraced former Conservative Member of Parliament Jonathan Aitken, his maternal grandfather was politician William Aitken and his maternal great-grandfather was the first Baron Rugby. His parents divorced when he was seven, at which point he was sent to the independent Dragon School, a co-educational boarding school in Oxford, as his parents did not want him to become involved in the divorce proceedings. He then went on to attend the independent school Cheltenham College, followed by the British American Drama Academy. He is married to the actress Michelle Gomez who gave birth to their son, Harry, in early 2010.
Susannah Harker (born on (1965-04-26)26 April 1965 in London, England) is an English film, television, and theatre actor. She is the daughter of English actress Polly Adams and actor Richard Owens, and the great-niece of Gordon Adams. She was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award in 1990 for her role as Mattie Storin in House of Cards.
Harker was brought up as a Catholic and educated at a 'strict' independent convent boarding school run by nuns in Sussex, and at the Central School of Speech and Drama in North London.
Harker appeared alongside Clive Owen in Chancer. She later played Dinah Morris in the 1991 making of Adam Bede. She starred as Jane Bennet in the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and appeared as Trevor Eve's love interest in Heat of the Sun. She also appeared in the play On the Shore of the Wide World.
She played Sapphire in Big Finish Productions' audio revival of Sapphire & Steel, produced as a series of CD plays in 2005, with a second series following in 2006/07. In 2003 she played Clare Keightley in the audio version of the Doctor Who adventure Shada, alongside Paul McGann.
Ultraviolet is a 1998 UK television series written and directed by Joe Ahearne and starring Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker, Idris Elba and Philip Quast. Music was composed and performed by Sue Hewitt. The programme was produced by World Productions for Channel 4.
The series follows Detective Sergeant Michael Colefield (Jack Davenport). Michael discovers that his partner Jack (Stephen Moyer) has gone missing on the night before his wedding to Kirsty (Collette Brown) with whom Michael is secretly in love. As he investigates Jack's disappearance, Michael uncovers a secret government vampire hunting squad consisting of soldier Vaughn Rice (Idris Elba), scientist Angela March (Susannah Harker), and a Catholic priest Pearse J Harman (Philip Quast). He also discovers that Jack has been turned into a vampire and ends up being recruited into the squad. Over the course of the series Michael and the vampire hunters investigate various vampire related cases, often involving medical experimentation, as they try to determine what the mysterious agenda of the vampires is. As they do so they deal with the personal consequences of their job including Michael's need to hide the truth from Kirsty, Angela's grief over her husband who was killed after he turned into a vampire, and Pearse's diagnosis of fatal leukemia. Cases investigated involve a woman who appears to be carrying a vampire child, a man who is being used to test synthetic blood for vampires, and the outbreak of a vampire related disease at a school.