Bill Patterson

Scottish actor Bill Paterson has been a mainstay of U.K. television dramas since the 1980s. Paterson's early acting career was spent on the stage, as part of such acting troupes as the Glasgow Citizens Theatre and the 7:84 Theatre Company, not to mention appearing with Billy Connolly in his breakthrough 1972 Edinburgh Festival hit "The Great Northern Welly Boot Show." The 7:84 company's contributions to the BBC's drama anthology series "Play for Today" brought him before the television cameras, and the '80s saw him land regular roles on the construction-worker comedy "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet," the noir musical "The Singing Detective," and the drug drama "Traffik." His film career also began to take off with supporting roles in Bill Forsyth's "Comfort and Joy" and the critically acclaimed Vietnam drama "The Killing Fields." In 1996, Paterson won a BAFTA Scotland Award for his role as Kenneth McHoan in the U.K. miniseries "The Crow Road." Paterson continued to enjoy U.K. television success in the 2000s, playing the lead character, Dr. Douglas Monaghan, in the paranormal mystery series "Sea of Souls." He also portrayed the kindhearted Mr. Meagles in the BBC's 2008 adaptation of Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit," and Detective George Castle in "Law & Order U.K.," the British spinoff of Dick Wolf's procedural juggernaut. Paterson has also worked extensively as a voice-over actor and narrator; his stories of his own childhood in the 1950s, "Tales from the Back Green," have enjoyed U.K. success in both radio and book form.