David McCallum

David Keith McCallum, Jr. (born 19 September 1933) is a Scottish actor and musician. He is best known for his roles as Illya Kuryakin, a Russian-born secret agent, in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as inter dimensional operative Steel in Sapphire & Steel, and Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard in the series NCIS.

Early life and career

McCallum was born in Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral leader (principal first violinist) David McCallum, Sr. When he was ten, his family moved to London. He won a scholarship to University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and became Assistant Stage Manager of the Glyndebourne Opera Company in 1951. He began his career as a bit-part actor in British films of the late 1950s, and his first acting role was in Whom the Gods Love, Die Young playing a doomed royal. A James Dean-themed photograph of McCallum caught the attention of the Rank Organisation, who signed him in 1957.
Early roles included a juvenile delinquent in Violent Playground (1957), an outlaw in Robbery Under Arms (1957) and as junior RMS Titanic radio operator Harold Bride in A Night to Remember (1958). His first American film was Freud the Secret Passion (1962), directed by John Huston, which was shortly followed by a role in Peter Ustinov S's Billy Budd. McCallum played Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ashley-Pitt "Dispersal" in The Great Escape which was released in 1963. He took the role of Judas Iscariot in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told. Notable pre-U.N.C.L.E. television roles included parts in The Outer Limits and Perry Mason.