Duncan Duff

Duff made his professional stage debut in 1987 with the British theatre company Cheek by Jowl, founded by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, in a production of Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse and on tour. He played the Thane of Angus and the cream faced loon, earning his Equity card and establishing himself as a member of the company for the next four years. The following year he played Caliban in Cheek by Jowl’s The Tempest which opened at the Taormina Festival, Sicily.

He also appeared in Cheek by Jowl’s productions of Philoctetes by Sophocles and Miss Sara Sampson by Gotthold Lessing. His fifth and final collaboration with the company was playing Horatio to Timothy Walker’s Hamlet in a production which played in London, UK, Europe, Hong Kong and Japan.

In 1992, Duff created the role of Willie Dobie in Scottish playwright Simon Donald’s new play, The Life of Stuff, at The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh with Shirley Henderson. Duff also appeared in the British premiere of Physical Jerks at Alan Ayckbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough, Life Goes On written by Adrian Hodges at The Haymarket Basingstoke, Three Sisters at Liverpool Everyman, Time and the Room at the Gate Theatre London and the eponymous role in Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler at Nottingham Playhouse. At the National Theatre, Duff played Bartolomeo Pergami in Nick Stafford’s new play Battle Royal directed by Howard Davies, which starred Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale. In 2002, he was Jason opposite Maureen Beattie’s Medea in Theatre Babel’s production of Liz Lochhead’s adaptation of Medea at the Edinburgh Festival and then on tour.

On television, Duff played the dope-smoking Doc Brown in the cult BBC 1 series Hamish Macbeth devised by Daniel Boyle and set in the Highlands of Scotland, co-starring with Robert Carlyle for three series (1995 - 1997). He starred as Geoff Spiller in the short-lived BBC comedy Big Kids with Imogen Stubbs (2000). For two years Duff was nefarious property developer Lewis Cope in BBC Scotland’s BAFTA Award winning drama River City (2002 - 2004) set in Glasgow.

Duff has leading roles in TV dramas such as: Why We Went To War (2006) playing Jonathan Powell; Roman Mysteries (2007) portraying the Emperor Domitian; the first season of TV show Skins (2007) playing evangelistic Congratulations Leader Pete; Purves & Pekkala (2009) AKA New Town by Annie Griffin, playing highly strung architectural preservationist Ernst de Bont; the beleaguered Governor of Boulogne in The Tudors (2010); TV presenter Tom Sutherland in the BBC series Lip Service (2010).

Duff has also acted in sitcoms: May To December (1994), The Creatives (1998), Not Going Out (2008). He was the anchor Richard Pritchard co-starring with Sharon Horgan in Broken News (2005) by John Morton for BBC and Gus Plotpoint in Charlie Brooker’s Touch of Cloth (2013) for Sky. In the cinema he has appeared in comedy roles in Carry On Columbus (1992), Festival (2005) directed by Annie Griffin, Wild Target (2010) directed by Jonathan Lynn, and Burke & Hare (2010) directed by comedy legend John Landis. Duff has appeared in dozens of short films, two of which were nominated for awards: King’s Christmas (1986; BAFTA nominated) and The Girls (2007; BIFA nominated).

Duff portrayed: Austin Dickinson, the brother of American poet Emily Dickinson, played by Cynthia Nixon, in Terence Davies's A Quiet Passion (2016); also starring Jennifer Ehle, Keith Carradine, Catherine Bailey, Joanna Bacon and Emma Bell. It was described by Richard Brody of The New Yorker as "an absolute drop-dead masterwork".^{[citation needed]}