Meet the stars of Doctor Who before they were famous

Christopher Eccleston

Christopher Eccleston was already a star by the time he was chosen to front the BBC’s long-awaited Doctor Who revival in 2005. He’d made his screen debut 15 years earlier in a BBC thriller called Blood Rights:

His breakthrough, however, was the lead role in the 1991 film Let Him Have It, the true story of the controversial hanging of teenager Derek Bentley. Here’s the trailer, complete with weirdly inappropriate American voiceover from that guy who voiced every trailer in the early 90s:

In Peter Flannery's seminal social drama Our Friends in the North (1996), Eccleston teamed up with fellow rising star Daniel Craig, little knowing they would go on to play two of Britain's most iconic screen characters.

Also in 1996, Chris starred alongside Kate Winslet in Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Osbcure, where he shared a scene with another promising young actor who would one day inherit the keys to his TARDIS…