John Hannah (actor) - Career

Career

After graduation, Hannah had parts in theatre productions, films, and television, including leading roles, then broke into the "big-time" with his appearance as Matthew in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Since this breakthrough role, he has played a psychopathic killer alongside Helen Baxendale in Truth or Dare and a mystery-solving pathologist in McCallum. He played a karaoke-mad dead-beat dad in The James Gang, drunken, thieving comic relief in The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001), and a Monty Python-quoting romantic comedy love interest in Sliding Doors (1998). He also starred in the axed U.S. series MDs (2002), as well as making guest appearances in Alias (2001), Carnivàle (2002) and Frasier (2003). In 2006 he starred in the drama series New Street Law. In 2007-2008, he played a starring role in the ITV crime drama Cold Blood.

On 24 December 1997, Hannah and Scottish Films producer Murray Ferguson established a production company called Clerkenwell Films. Clerkenwell's first big production was the Rebus series, including Black And Blue and The Hanging Garden. However, Rebus was later taken in-house by STV Productions, and Hannah was replaced in the leading role in the series by Ken Stott. He is the voice of the The Co-operative Group adverts in the UK. More recently he played the part of Quintus Lentulus Batiatus, the owner of a gladiator training house in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and its prequel, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.