Doctor Who Doctors ranked by age when they first appeared
Who is the youngest actor ever to have taken on the role of the Doctor in BBC’s science fiction series Doctor Who? And to that matter, who is the oldest person ever to have appeared on screen in the lead role?
Over the years there have been fifteen main incarnations of the Doctor, and although we have already looked at who is the tallest and who has had the most episodes in the TARDIS, today we turn our attendance to their ages when they first appeared on the screen.
The ranked list below is based on the age that the actor was when they first appeared on screen in the series (or in the case of Ncuti Gatwa, the age he will be as it’s in the future), and not the age when they were first cast in the role or announced.
As we can see from the list, there have been Doctors of many ages as we approach the show’s 60th anniversary and we look to season 14 of the show under Russell T Davies as showrunner once again.
But who was the youngest when they first appeared as the Doctor on our screens? It’s time to find out…
Doctor Who Doctors ranked by age when they first appeared – oldest to youngest
15. William Hartnell
55 years old
The very first actor to play the very first incarnation of the famous Time Lord, it was William Hartnell who started the whole thing off in November 1963. He would go on to star in a whopping 134 episodes of Doctor Who and at 55 years old when An Unearthly Child aired, he is the oldest actor to have ever been cast in the role.
14. Peter Capaldi
55 years old
Many of the modern Doctor Who stars have been at the younger end of the spectrum, but Peter Capaldi was already a seasoned star and an Oscar -winner when he took on the role of the Twelfth Doctor in 2014. Aged 55 at the time, he was just a little bit younger than the very first Doctor, William Hartnell, during his three seasons on the show until 2017.
The countdown continues on page 2
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