Christian Cooke

Born Christian Louis Cooke on September 15, 1987, he began acting as a student at the Bingley Arts Centre. He landed his first screen appearance in a television commercial for Birds Eye frozen foods at the age of 10. Two years later, Cooke was starring in the children's comedy series "Wilmot" as a mischievous pre-teen. After gaining valuable experience through appearances in stage productions of "Peter Pan" and "Bugsy Malone," Cooke enrolled in the acclaimed Yorkshire acting school Stage 84, from which he graduated. He then segued to a supporting role on the long-running soap opera "Where the Heart Is" from 2000 to 2006, while also making regular guest appearances on other series, including "Doctors" (BBC One, 2000-) and "Robin Hood" (BBC One, 2006-2009) as the brother of Harry Lloyd's Will Scarlett. In 2008, Cooke appeared in two episodes of "Doctor Who" (BBC/BBC One, 1963-1989; 1996; 2005) as an ill-fated soldier before returning to series lead in "Demons" as a descendant of Bram Stoker's legendary vampire hunter, Dr. Van Helsing, who is pressed into fighting the forces of supernatural evil. The following year, Cooke made his feature film debut as the star of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's period coming-of-age drama "Cemetery Junction." In 2011, Cooke played a young British paratrooper serving in Palestine after World War II in the miniseries "The Promise" (Channel 4). He then made his American television debut in the well-regarded but short-lived period drama "Magic City" as the law student son of Miami hotelier Jeffrey Dean Morgan. When the series ran its course in 2013, he segued to playing Mercutio in Julian Fellowes' largely dismissed film version of "Romeo and Juliet" (2013). During this period, numerous media outlets mentioned his name as a replacement for actor Charlie Hunnam in the screen version of Fifty Shades of Grey until October of that year, when Jamie Dornan was officially cast as the film's protagonist, Christian Grey.