Mackenzie Crook - Americola, the celebrity encyclopedia 
Mackenzie Crook
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Paul Mackenzie Crook (born September 29, 1971) is an English actor best known for playing Gareth Keenan in The Office.
Contents
- 1 Early life
- 2 Professional career
- 2.1 Film & TV Roles
- 2.2 Theatre Performances
- 2.3 Other Projects
- 3 Personal life
- 4 External links
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Early life
Crook was born in Maidstone, Kent, and grew up in Dartford. His father, Michael Crook worked for British Airways and his mother, Sheila Crook was a hospital manager. He also has two sisters, one the eldest and one the youngest. In the summers he spent time with his uncle in Zimbabwe where he developed a love for painting. He went to Wilmington Grammar School for Boys, and did his first plays there. He joined the Orchard Youth Theatre in Dartford when he was about 15 and gained his inspiration for acting.
Professional career
Film & TV Roles
Crook began his career as a standup comedian alongside
Iain Lee. They appeared at the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival in the mid-90's as Chalk and Cheese. He had also often performed as a grotesque schoolteacher called Mr. Bagshaw. Crook's first major
television role was as a comedy sketch contributor on
Channel 4's
The Eleven O'Clock Show in
1998. He was later a member of the main cast of the
BBC sketch show
TV to Go in
2001. From 2001 to 2003 he played the role of
Gareth Keenan in the popular
mockumentary The Office. He appeared in
Pirates of the Caribbean (2003),
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), and is expected to appear in
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007), as
Ragetti, a pirate with a comically ill-fitting wooden eye. He has appeared in ads for
Visa and M&Ms (as his Ragetti character in both). According to past interviews he received the role when
Johnny Depp recommended him to
Gore Verbinski to play a part in the films after bonding with Mackenzie on the set of
Finding Neverland.
Many of those who have interviewed him have described him as a shy and quietly-spoken man, being also fairly nervous.
He also appeared as Launcelot Gobbo in Michael Radford's 2004 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Crook played a minor role in the 2004 film Finding Neverland as a theatre usher. Other films he starred in include The Gathering, The Brother's Grimm and Churchill: The Hollywood Years. Another one is Johnny Vegas' The Sex Lives of The Potato Men.
Mackenzie 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 (2007). He is also has a role in an upcoming film in 2007 I Want Candy (2007 film) as Mr Dulberg, a quirky University Professor. Also, he is to voice a main character called Rolli in an animated film from Finland called 'Quest For A Heart'.
Theatre Performances
He played Billy Bibbit in the 2004 London West End production of the stage play of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and in 2006 The Exonerated at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. He has featured in a production of The Seagull at the Royal Court Theatre as a troubled writer named Konstantin.
Other Projects
Crook has said that his other ambitions would be to draw and write and he has recently made a deal with the book publisher Faber to illustrate and write a children's book about a boy who finds something strange in his garden after the hurricane of 1987.
Crook has also written a film script and shown it to director Sam Mendes, about a group of gangsters in 18th Century London in which he hopes to play the lead.
Personal life
He now lives in Muswell Hill, North London in Peter Sellers' old semi-detached house (which he bought for £700,000) with his wife, Lindsay, and his four-year-old son, Jude.
