Tristan Sturrock

Tristan Sturrock is a British theatre, television, and film actor born in 1967 in Upton Cross, Cornwall, England. He made his Broadway appearance in 2010 in Brief Encounter, in which he played the role of Dr. Alec Harvey.

Sturrock began his professional career in theatre in 1986 when he joined Kneehigh Theatre, a Truro-based international touring company, with which he has maintained an association spanning more than 30 years. His stage work has taken him to Broadway, the West End, and the National Theatre. At the National Theatre, he originated the title role in the first cast of Emma Rice's Tristan and Yseult, performed at the Cottesloe, which subsequently toured to Sydney, New Zealand, and the United States. He also appeared at the National Theatre in A Matter of Life and Death, in which he played Peter Carter at the Olivier, and in The Riot. In 2015, he played Maxim De Winter in Rebecca, also directed by Rice. His work at the Donmar Warehouse includes the title role in The King of Prussia. At the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sturrock appeared in The Spanish Tragedy and The Mysteries, and he played Orlando in As You Like It at the Royal Exchange Theatre, directed by Marianne Elliot. His extensive body of work with Kneehigh includes Tregeagle, Ship of Fools, Peer Gynt, The Ashmaid, Danger My Ally, Windfall, and Don John.

Sturrock is an associate artist at Bristol Old Vic Theatre, where his credits include Long John Silver in Sally Cookson's Treasure Island and the title role in Cookson's Peter Pan in 2012. He played Pongo in 101 Dalmatians at the Tobacco Factory and the Friar in Tom Morris's Juliet and her Romeo. He is also co-artistic director of the Bristol-based company Theatre Damfino, which he runs with his partner Katy Carmichael. Through Theatre Damfino, he produced The Table of Delights at Bristol Old Vic, which won an Off West End Award in 2016 in the best production for families category and subsequently played at the Print Room Theatre in London.

Sturrock wrote and performed Mayday Mayday, an autobiographical solo piece based on his recovery from a broken neck sustained in May 2004, when he fell from a wall during the Obby Oss festival in Padstow, Cornwall. He was airlifted to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, underwent surgery three weeks after the accident, and spent approximately three months in hospital before being discharged to his parents' home on Bodmin Moor. He attended physiotherapy as an outpatient, and while he made significant progress over the following year, nerve damage left him with permanent numbness in his fingers, arms, shoulders, and feet. The production premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2012, where it won the International Fringe Review Award, and was subsequently selected by artistic director Susan Feldman to play at St Ann's Warehouse in New York in 2013. It also appeared at the Spoleto International Theatre Festival in South Carolina. The piece raised awareness for the spinal injury charity Aspire. A radio adaptation by Becky Ripley was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 1 May 2015 and won the International Third Coast Award in the United States. The production was also nominated for two BBC Drama Awards in 2016, for best sound design and best drama production.

On television, Sturrock made his first appearance in 1996 in a guest role on the British detective series Wycliffe. Subsequent television credits include Liverpool 1, The New Adventures of Robin Hood, The Bill, Rescue Me, Holby City, and The Royal. From 2003 to 2005, he played Officer Colin Hedges in the ITV prison drama Bad Girls across its fifth, sixth, and seventh series. He appeared in Garrow's Law, The Borgias, and the television film The Best of Men. He played Peter Townsend in the Channel 4 production The Queen, Doctor Bernard Gould in Endeavour in 2016, and John Wheeler-Bennett in the second season of The Crown in 2017. In 2014, he was cast as Cornish miner Zacky Martin in Poldark, a role he held across all five series of the show, which aired in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2019.

In film, Sturrock appeared as Harvey Sloggit in the 2000 feature Saving Grace. He played Harvey, a sidekick to Martin Clunes's character, in the Doc Martin prequel films Doc Martin and Doc Martin and the Legend of the Cloutie in 2003, and returned to the franchise in 2005 and again in 2015 as Danny Steel.

Sturrock is married to actress and director Katy Carmichael, with whom he has three children: a son born in 2004 and two daughters born in 2006 and 2010.