TV

5 things you didn’t know about ‘Doctor Who’ star Peter Capaldi

“Doctor Who,” the long-running and beloved BBC show, returns Saturday with a new Doctor at the helm.

The iconic time traveler is being played this time around by 56-year-old Scottish actor Peter Capaldi, who’ll put a different twist on the role most recently inhabited by 31-year-old Brit Matt Smith:

Check out our interview with Capaldi on Friday; in the meantime, here are five surprising facts about the man who’s about to become the world’s best-known sci-fi star.

  1. 1. He won an Oscar in 1994.

    It was for Best Live Action Short Film, for “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life,” a satire he wrote and directed in which Richard E. Grant (“Withnail and I”) plays the Czech author, whose efforts to write “The Metamophosis” are hampered by the Christmas celebration of his downstairs neighbors.

  2. 2. He already played a small role on “Doctor Who.”

    In the 2008 episode “The Fires of Pompeii,” while fellow Scot David Tennant was in the role of the Doctor, Capaldi showed up as a Roman merchant named Lucius Caecilius, who purchased the TARDIS as a decoration for his house.

  3. 3. He is famous for his swearing proficiency.

    As spin doctor Malcolm Tucker on the British series “The Thick of It” and its 2009 film adaptation, “In the Loop,” Capaldi became renowned for his effervescent cursing and creative turns of phrase, such as the memorable parting shot “F - - kity-bye!”

  4. 4. He was once in a punk band with Craig Ferguson.

    The band Dreamboys featured Capaldi on vocals and lead guitar and Ferguson on drums; the band released a three-song EP in 1980. When Capaldi appeared on Ferguson’s late-night show before the release of “In the Loop,” the host introduced him thusly: “I’ve actually taken acid with my next guest!”

  5. 5. His Doctor is unabashedly Scottish.

    Unlike Tennant, who chose to tame his accent into an English one to play the Doctor — but perhaps not quite so much as the archaeologist he played in the 1988 Ken Russell film “Lair of the White Worm,” featuring a bagpipe chase scene with a gory ending.