Mackenzie Crook

One of British comedy's best known faces, MACKENZIE CROOK, who collected Star Wars figurines as a child, is now immortalized in plastic as a 6"-high pirate action figure from his role in the Pirates of the Caribbean blockbusters. He was born Paul Mackenzie Crook on September 29, 1971, in Maidstone, Kent, England, UK, and went to grammar school in Dartford, where he first began appearing in plays. He also spent time as a youth with his uncle in Zimbabwe.

Growing up, Crook expressed his creativity through painting, even replicating a pre-Raphaelite's painting on to the back of his biker's jacket, and joined a local youth theatre. At the age of 18, he failed to secure a place at art college and turned to writing comedy sketches. However, the principal of the youth theatre believed in his potential and became his manager, guiding Crook to a career as a stand-up comedian.

In 1996, Crook made his film debut in The Man Who Fell in Love with a Traffic Cone! The following year, he was scouted by Bob Mortimer at the Edinburgh Festival and shortly thereafter made his debut on television as a stand-up comedian on The 11 O'Clock Show, then worked on other TV shows playing grotesques and exaggerated characters.

From there, Crook shot to fame as Gareth Keenan, a quirky geek with a funny haircut, in the hit UK comedy series, The Office, for which he earned a British Comedy Award nomination. He was also a member of the main cast of the BBC show TV to Go.

The actor made his big screen debut opposite Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice, and subsequently appeared with Heath Ledger in The Brothers Grimm, and Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland. Depp and Crookk had bonded during the making of Neverland and it was Depp who recommended him as Ragetti, his best known role, in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and its sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

After roughly a decade on the stand-up comedian circuit, his deftness with quirky characters brought him to worldwide attention. In the Pirates trilogy, Crook has displayed some of his funniest and widest variety of emotions, effortlessly shifting facial expression from philosophical pensiveness to grotesque excitement, and from a comically exaggerated fear to gleeful exuberance while removing the character's wooden eyeball.

In 2004, Crook appeared as Billy Bibbit, opposite Christian Slater, in the West End stage production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which initially opened at Gielgud Theatre and then played at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival. He has also written a screenplay for a future project, which he describes as a period production set in London around the same period as the Pirates movies.

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