David McCallum

David McCallum is a TV Actor, and he was born on 19 September - 1933(90 years old) in Scotland. David McCallum zodiac sign is Virgo. More detailed information about David McCallum given below.

David McCallum Timeline

• 1946
  

  McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boysu0027 independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe. In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Nightu0027s Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted for National Service. He joined the British Armyu0027s 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force. In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

• 1951
  

  In 1951, McCallum became assistant stage manager of the Glyndebourne Opera Company. He began his acting career doing boy voices for BBC Radio in 1947 and began taking bit parts in British films from the late 1950s. His first acting role was in Whom the Gods Love, Die Young playing a doomed royal. A James Dean-themed photograph of McCallum caught the attention of the Rank Organisation, who signed him in 1956. However, in an interview with Alan Titchmarsh broadcast on 3 November 2010, McCallum stated that he had actually held his Equity card since 1946.

• 1957
  

  On 11 May 1957, McCallum married actress Jill Ireland in London. The couple had met during production of the film Hell Drivers. The marriage lasted 10 years. After leaving McCallum, Ireland married Charles Bronson, whom McCallum had introduced to her while McCallum and Bronson were filming The Great Escape (1963). McCallum and Ireland had three sons: Paul, Jason and Valentine (Val). Jason, who was adopted, died from an accidental drug overdose in 1989. Val McCallum is a guitar player, playing with Jackson Browne most recently in 2014 and is a member of the faux country band, Jackshit.

• 1963
  

  Early roles included a juvenile delinquent in Violent Playground (1957), an outlaw in Robbery Under Arms, (1957) and as junior RMS Titanic radio operator Harold Bride in A Night to Remember (1958). His first American film was Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), directed by John Huston, which was shortly followed by a role in Peter Ustinovu0027s Billy Budd. McCallum played Lt Cdr Eric Ashley-Pitt (a.k.a., "Dispersal") in The Great Escape, which was released in 1963. He took the role of Judas Iscariot in 1965u0027s The Greatest Story Ever Told. Other television roles included two appearances on The Outer Limits and a guest appearance on Perry Mason in 1964 as defendant Phillipe Bertain in "The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman".

• 1966
  

  Although the show aired at the height of the Cold War, McCallumu0027s Russian alter ego became a pop culture phenomenon. The actor was inundated with fan letters, and a Beatles-like frenzy followed him everywhere he went. While playing Kuryakin, McCallum received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayeru0027s history, including such popular MGM stars as Clark Gable and Elvis Presley. Hero worship even led to a record, Love Ya, Illya, performed by Alma Cogan under the name Angela and the Fans, which was a pirate radio hit in Britain in 1966. A 1990s rock-rap group from Argentina named itself Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas in honour of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. character.McCallum did not sing on these records, as many television stars of the 1960s did when offered recording contracts. As a classically trained musician, he conceived a blend of oboe, English horn and strings with guitar and drums, and presented instrumental interpretations of hits of the day. The official arranger on the albums was H. B. Barnum. However, McCallum conducted, and contributed several original compositions of his own, over the course of four LPs. The first two, Music...A Part of Me and Music...A Bit More of Me, have been issued together on CD on the Zonophone label. On Open Channel D, McCallum did sing on the first four tracks, "Communication", "House on Breckenridge Lane", "In the Garden, Under the Tree" (the theme song from the film Three Bites of the Apple) and "My Carousel". The music tracks are the same as the Zonophone CD. This CD was released on the Rev-Ola label. The single release of "Communication" reached No. 32 in the UK Singles Chart in April 1966.

• 1967
  

  In 1967, McCallum married Katherine Carpenter. They have a son, Peter, and a daughter, Sophie. McCallum and his wife are active in charitable organisations that support the United States Marine Corps: Katherineu0027s father was a Marine who served in the Battle of Iwo Jima and her brother was killed in the Vietnam War. On 27 August 1999, McCallum was naturalized as a United States citizen. McCallum has six grandchildren. He was friends with Tibor Rubin.

• 1968
  

  McCallum played supporting parts in a number of feature films, although he played the title role in the 1968 thriller, Sol Madrid.

• 1975
  

  McCallum never quite repeated the popular success he had gained as Kuryakin until NCIS, though he did become a familiar face on British television in such shows as Colditz (1972u201374), Kidnapped (1978), and ITVu0027s science-fiction series Sapphire & Steel (1979u201382) opposite Joanna Lumley. In 1975 he played the title character in a short-lived U.S. version of The Invisible Man.

• 1983
  

  McCallum and Vaughn reprised their roles of Kuryakin and Solo in a 1983 TV film, Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In 1986 McCallum reunited with Robert Vaughn again in an episode of The A-Team entitled "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair", complete with "chapter titles", the word "affair" in the title, the phrase "Open Channel D", and similar scene transitions.

• 1989
  

  McCallum starred with Diana Rigg in the 1989 TV miniseries Mother Love. In 1991 and 1992 McCallum played gambler John Grey, one of the principal characters in the television series Trainer. He appeared as a British double agent in a 1989 episode of Murder, She Wrote. In the 1990s McCallum guest-starred in two U.S. television series. In season 1 of seaQuest DSV, he appeared as the law-enforcement officer Frank Cobb of the fictional Broken Ridge of the Ausland Confederation, an underwater mining camp off the coast of Australia by the Great Barrier Reef; he also had a guest-star role in one episode of Babylon 5.

• 1994
  

  In 1994, McCallum narrated the acclaimed documentaries Titanic: The Complete Story for A&E Networks. This was the second project about the Titanic on which he had worked: the first was the 1958 film A Night to Remember, in which he had had a small role.

• 2003
  

  Since 2003 McCallum has starred in the CBS television series NCIS as Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard, the teamu0027s chief medical examiner and one of the showu0027s most popular characters. In Season 2 Episode 13 "The Meat Puzzle", NCIS Special Agent Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander) asks Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), "What did Ducky look like when he was younger?" and Gibbs replies, "Illya Kuryakin".

• 2006
  

  According to the behind-the-scenes feature on the 2006 DVD of NCIS season 1, McCallum became an expert in forensics to play Mallard, including attending medical examiner conventions. In the feature, Donald P. Bellisario says that McCallumu0027s knowledge became so vast that at the time of the interview he was considering making him a technical adviser on the show.

• 2014
  

  In late April 2012 it was announced that McCallum had reached agreement on a two-year contract extension with CBS-TV. The move meant that he would remain an NCIS regular past his eightieth birthday. In May 2014 he signed another two-year contract. He has since signed extensions in 2016, beginning a limited schedule in 2017 and renewing the same for seasons 15, 16 & 17 - each one separately.

• 2016
  

  In 2016, McCallum published a crime novel entitled Once a Crooked Man. The narrative is set in New York and London and centres on a young actor who tries to foil a murder. McCallum has stated that a second novel is in progress.