Shetland actor Douglas Henshall may no longer star in the Scottish crime drama but fans are still keen to know all there is about the man behind DI Jimmy Perez.
Shetland season nine made its debut on Wednesday, November 6, on BBC One, with DI Ruth Calder (played by Ashley Jensen) stepping into her predecessor’s shoes.
But viewers haven’t just forgotten about Jimmy star Douglas Henshall, with many eager to know all there is to know about the 58-year-old’s life.
Early days
Born in November 1965 in Barrhead, Henshall is one of three siblings to his housewife mum, who later became a nurse, and a salesman dad.
He recalls growing up as a shy child but found solace in performing, telling The Scotsman in 2010: “I think the other side is finding something where you can express yourself and feel comfortable, and for me, that was on stage in front of lots of people.”
This passion led him to join the Glasgow Youth Theatre before going on to study at Mountview Theatre School and then joined the Citizens’ Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company.
Onscreen roles
His first ever onscreen role was in the classic drama Taggart in 1990 when he played a motorcyclist.
It was over the next few years that he starred in minor roles like in Van der Valk, The Bill, Ghosts and Sharpe.
In 1993, Henshall won himself a part in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence who befriended the young explorer, then played by actor Sean Patrick Flanery.
He took on parts in various other projects like the movies French Film, Ripley Under Ground and Dead Long Enough before landing the role of Professor Nick Cutter in the sci-fi series Primeval.
This was Henshall’s biggest role to date as a primetime ITV drama and catapulted him into the limelight, leading him to star in other hits like Dorian Gray, Collision, The Silence, Outlander and In Plain Sight.
Of course, it was then in 2013 that he began starring in the popular Scotland-set crime drama Shetland as troubled DI Jimmy Perez for nine years.
Future concerns
It was in 2022 that Henshall decided to leave his time on Shetland behind with Jimmy sacrificing his job to help an innocent man, before moving elsewhere with love interest Meg (Lucianne McEvoy).
But at the time of his departure, the star did express some worries about his future in the entertainment industry to Radio Times.
“It’s very difficult to make conscious decisions about what you’re going to do when you’re a 57-year-old white man”, he said.
“There aren’t so many roles around for me anymore. I think that’s just a fact of getting older.
“People are looking for younger actors these days. There’s a degree of, ‘I’ve been offered that, I’m grateful for the job, I’ll go and do it.'”
Thankfully, he has continued to have a steady string of shows to work on including The Darkness, Murder Is Easy and Netflix’s Who Is Erin Carter?.
He is also working on a mystery drama called One Of Us which will co-star Heartstopper actor Kit Connor.
Famous wife
The Shetland actor is married to playwright and screenwriter Tena Štivičić who comes from Zagreb in Croatia and studied at the Academy of Dramatic Art, followed by an MA in Writing for Performance at the University of London.
She has written plays including The Two Of Us, Fireflies, Invisible, Europe and Three Winters but also had roles in front of the camera in the late 1990s in Croatian films The Third Woman and Is It Clear My Friend?.
Henshall and Štivičić got married in Las Vegas in 2010 with him telling The Scotsman that she was his “perfect match”.
Fatherhood doubts
Six years after their wedding day, Henshall and his wife welcomed their daughter Anja Grace but tends to keep her out of the spotlight apart from the occasional post on Instagram.
He wasn’t always sure about becoming a dad though as he expressed to the Daily Mail in 2017: “I was never interested in being married or having children and now I’m married with a small daughter.
“My wife was keen to have a child and I thought, ‘Well okay, let’s give it a bash.’
“I was worried. You look at Mick Jagger having another kid at 73 and I was worried because I don’t think that’s responsible.
“My daughter is going to get people saying, ‘Is that your grandpa coming to pick you up?’
“But I will be less selfish and I’ll be able to help her a lot more than I would have if I had been a younger man.”
Shetland season nine continues every Wednesday at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.