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Captain Jack Harkness had been at Torchwood forever,
or so it seems. He was once a Time Agent in the 51st century, but
came to run Torchwood Three - the Cardiff office efficiently and effectively
and with the respect and unswerving loyalty of his team. His team, at first, knew little about him. They discovered that he can’t die. That much was revealed to them when he returned from the dead after his battle with Abaddon. He disappeared for a while after that incident, and when he returned he only revealed that he ‘found his Doctor’. He was sometimes angry and irritated with the team, but at other times showed that he cares for them deeply. He cared most deeply for Ianto, with whom he had had an ongoing sexual relationship which, though it was never said openly, was based on mutual love. Jack was a man of contrasts and enigmas. He could be brash, he flirted outrageously. He had a line in innuendos second to none. He also had a dark side that was frightening to those who tried to get close to him. He had gentle, sensitive side that wasn’t seen often enough. The death of two of his team, Toshiko and Owen, affected him deeply.
It was later revealed that Jack had once been married, to a woman called Lucia Moretti, another Torchwood agent. They had a daughter called Melissa, who took her mother's surname, Moretti. She later entered a witness protection programme, changing her name to Alice Sangster and then later, Alice Carter, when she married. She, in turn, had a son, Steven, Jack's grandson. There was affection of a sort between father and daughter, but also tension and resentments. Jack wanted to get to know his grandson, who knew him as Uncle Jack, but Alice made him keep his distance. In any case, both of them became tragically caught up in the events surrounding the 456, and when Steven was killed due to Jack's own actions against the aliens, it was clear that his relationship with Alice was over.
This, on top of the death of Ianto Jones, his lover, also as a result of the fight against the 456, proved too much for Jack. He was last seen leaving the planet for what he called 'a new life'. Jack Harkness became the last victim of the 456, 'dying' in name, at least. Certainly there was little for him to come back to on planet Earth, least of all, Torchwood.
He spent the next few years of his life in Joliet, Illinois, where his father was a manager at the Caterpillar tractor factory. Barrowman was graduated from Joliet West High School in 1985. While still in high school, he won parts in several musical productions. Between 1983 and 1985 he performed in productions of Hello, Dolly!, Oliver!, Camelot, Li'l Abner and Anything Goes. He attended university in San Diego, and returned to the United Kingdom in 1990. John met his partner, British designer Scott Gill, in 1991 during
a production at the Chichester Festival Theatre. The couple have homes
in London and the Bay Area, Cardiff. Despite their long-standing relationship,
John told Scotland's The Herald newspaper that he had no plans to
marry, saying: "Why would I want a 'marriage' from a belief system
that hates me?". However, he and Gill became civil partners on
December 27, 2006. As Barrowman explained when the couple were interviewed
by Attitude magazine, the couple do not want to call this a marriage:
"We're just going to sign the civil register. We're not going
to have any ceremony because John has appeared in several West End musicals, including Anything Goes (both 1989 and 2003 productions), Miss Saigon, Beauty and the Beast, Matador, Hair, Grease!, Sunset Boulevard and The Phantom of the Opera (as Raoul). He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in 1998 for his role in The Fix. He has also appeared in the West End in non-musical dramas, such as Rope and the 2005 production of A Few Good Men, in which Barrowman starred opposite Rob Lowe. Most recently he starred in Cinderella at the New Wimbledon Theatre for the 2005-2006 Christmas season. He has played the role of Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard in the West End and, briefly, on Broadway. His only other Broadway credit is the Stephen Sondheim revue Putting It Together (1999–2000). In 2002, he appeared in the central role of Bobby in Sondheim's Company in the Kennedy Center's Stephen Sondheim Celebration. He is probably best known in the United States for starring roles in several short-lived prime-time soap operas such as Titans with Yasmine Bleeth in 2000 and Central Park West, as well as the low-budget cult film Shark Attack 3: Megalodon.
John Barrowman, who is openly gay, was under consideration for the role of Will in the popular US series "Will and Grace" but the producers felt he was "too straight" and the role went to Eric McCormack instead, who is straight. "The sad thing is it's run by gay men and women," he said in a January 2006 article. He later expressed contempt at the idea that all gay men act the same way.
John Barrowman's musical abilities have been featured in film: he had a duet with Kevin Kline in the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely, and he sang "Springtime for Hitler" in the film of Mel Brooks' The Producers, based on the Broadway adaptation of the original movie. He also recently performed in and co-presented another new BBC One series for Saturday nights, entitled The Sound of Musicals, in which performers from West End musicals sing songs from the shows. For the 2006/7 pantomime season, he appeared as Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk at the New Theatre in Cardiff. John Barrowman co-hosted the first run of the BBC
children's variety show Live & Kicking in 1993–1994, co-hosting
the show with Andi Peters and Emma Forbes, before moving on to The
Movie Game, a children's television game show. In the late 1990's
he was one of the regular presenters on Five's afternoon show Five's
Company. During January and February 2006 Barrowman took part in the ITV1 series Dancing on Ice, where Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean trained celebrities to compete in an ice skating show which took onboard many characteristics of a real ice skating competition. Barrowman's skating partner was World Junior Gold Medalist and three-time Russian champion Olga Sharutenko. Although a favourite to win, on 4 February, Barrowman and Sharutenko faced Stefan Booth and Kristina Cousins in the skate off and were eliminated by the judge's vote of 3 to 2. Between 10 April and 14 April 2006, John presented ITV's morning talk show This Morning whilst Phillip Schofield took an Easter Break. Between 1 May and 5 May 2006, he read bedtime stories on the CBeebies channel. In Summer 2006, he was on the Judges panel of BBC One's How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? music talent show alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Ian, and Zoe Tyler. On December 31, 2006, John made two television appearances. The first was on BBC Television's Heaven and Earth, hosted by Gloria Hunniford. On it he talked about spirituality and civil partnerships. His second appearance was as a guest on a team with Craig Revel Horwood and Louis Walsh, on Graham Norton's one-off programme, The Big Finish which was also broadcast on BBC Television. It was a light-hearted look at news stories in 2006. On February 11, 2007 he co-presented the E!: In 2007 Barrowman was a judge in the BBC One television series "Any Dream Will Do". He resultantly featured on BBC Two comedy panel quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks (Series 19, Episode 5), "Al Murray's Happy Hour", "The Charlotte Church Show", and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. John took part in the Doctor Who Weakest Link, Which aired on the 30 March 2007 however he didn't make it into the final. John Barrowman is bidialectal. He learned an American accent after school children picked on his Scottish accent when he moved to the USA. He speaks with a Scottish accent when at home with his parents. His biography, Anything Goes, was pulished in 2007. His sister Carole co-wrote it. 2008 saw a successful concert tour, an album and single as well as recording the third series of Torchwood. 2009's highlights included another tour, the variety series, Tonight's The Night and the children's TV show, Animals at Work, and John's return to the West End in La Cage Aux Folles. His follow up biography, I Am What I Am and a DVD of his concert tour are due in the autumn. The future remains bright.
Doctor Who "Doctor Who" - Journey's End (2008) .... Captain Jack Harkness Episode dated 1 January 2010 (2010) .... Captain
Jack Harkness
Torchwood Day One (22 October 2006) - Captain Jack Harkness
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (16 January 2008) - Captain Jack Harkness
- Children of Earth: Day Five (2009)
.... Captain Jack Harkness
Before Torchwood The Producers (2005) .... Lead Tenor
Soundtrack:
Himself
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John
Barrowman was born on 11 March 1967 in Mount Vernon, Glasgow. He currently
lives in the UK. He became a United States citizen in 1985, and holds
dual US/UK citizenship. He spent the first eight years of his life
in Glasgow where his mother worked in a record shop and his father
worked for the Caterpillar heavy machinery company. In 1975 the family
was relocated to America with his father's work.
I'm
not a supporter of the word marriage for a gay partnership."
The two did have a small ceremony in Cardiff with around 40 friends
and family. Among the guests were the regular cast of Torchwood, along
with Russell T Davies, the Doctor Who and Torchwood executive producer.
The civil partnership was covered by OK! magazine, which published
pictures of the ceremony on 16 January, 2007.
He
appeared in five episodes of Doctor Who as Captain Jack Harkness,
beginning in The Empty Child. He is now continuing the role of Jack
Harkness, starring in Torchwood the spin-off series set in modern-day
Cardiff and investigating alien activities and crime. In both shows
the character is portrayed as omnisexual. Torchwood has been renewed
for a second series. He returned to Doctor Who in 2007, appearing
in three of the final four episodes of the show's third season, as
well as a "Doctor Who" special of the show "Weakest
Link".
Entertainment Television BAFTA Film Awards red carpet coverage with
Ruby Wax. He also guest-presented two editions of the Elaine Paige
Show, a pre-recorded BBC Radio 2 weekly Musical Theatre and Film Music
showcase. The first edition which was broadcast on February 11, 2007,
and the second was broadcast on February 18, 2007.
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