Peter Dougan Capaldi (/kəˈpældiː/; born 14 April 1958) is a Scottish actor, director, writer and musician. He portrayed the twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who (2013–2017) and Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It (2005–2012), for which he received four British Academy Television Award nominations, winning Best Male Comedy Performance in 2010. When he reprised the role of Tucker in the feature film In the Loop, Capaldi was honoured with several film critic award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

Capaldi won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film for his 1993 short film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life. He went on to write and direct the drama film Strictly Sinatra and directed two series of the sitcom Getting On. Capaldi also played Mr Curry in the family film Paddington (2014) and its sequel Paddington 2 (2017), voiced Rabbit in the Disney film Christopher Robin (2018) and portrayed supervillain The Thinker in the DC Extended Universe film The Suicide Squad (2021).

Early life
Capaldi was born in Glasgow, Scotland, to Nancy (née Soutar) and Gerald John Capaldi. His paternal grandfather was Italian, while the rest of his ancestry is Scottish and Irish. His parents ran an ice cream business in the Springburn district, where they were neighbours and acquaintances of the family of Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It, although the two men did not know each other as children. He was educated at St Teresa's Primary School in Possilpark, St Matthew's Primary School in Bishopbriggs, and St Ninian's High School, Kirkintilloch, before attending the Glasgow School of Art.

Capaldi displayed an early talent for performance by putting on a puppet show in primary school. While at high school, he was a member of the Antonine Players, who performed at the Fort Theatre in Bishopbriggs. As an art student, he was the lead singer and guitarist in a punk rock band called The Dreamboys, whose drummer was future comedian Craig Ferguson. The pair also performed a cabaret act together as Bing & Dean Hitler and wrote an alternative pantomime of Sleeping Beauty. Capaldi went on to perform musical comedy cabaret in the guises of "bank clerk about town" Gavin Meekie and as one half of husband-and-wife TV evangelists Tom & Sammy Jo.