Mackenzie Crook

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A picture of Crook from Mackenzie Crook Central

Paul Mackenzie Crook (born September 29, 1971) is an English actor best known for playing Gareth Keenan in The Office.

Crook was born in Maidstone, Kent, and grew up in Dartford. He began his career as a standup comedian, and his first major television role was as a comedy sketch contributor on Channel 4's The Eleven O'Clock Show in 1998. He was later a member of the main cast of the BBC sketch show TV to Go in 2001.

He appeared in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), and is expected to appear in Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007), as Ragetti, a pirate with a wooden eye. He has appeared in ads for Visa and M&Ms (as his Ragetti character in both). Many of those who have interviewed him have described him as a shy and quiet man.

He also appeared in Michael Radford's 2004 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, playing the role of Launcelot Gobbo. Crook played a minor role in the 2004 film Finding Neverland as a theatre usher. Other films he starred in include Johnny Vegas' The Sex Lives of The Potato Men (Which was sadly a British comedy flop by its reviewers), The Brother's Grimm, The Gathering and Churchill: The Hollywood Years.

Mackenzie has starred in 3 of Ben Gregor's short films, Ant Muzak (2002) as Gary Tibbs, Blake's Junction 7 (2004) as Servalan and World of Wrestling (2006) as Glorious George. He is also has a role in an upcoming film in 2007 I Want Candy as a quirky University Proffessor. He played Billy Bibbit in the 2004 London West End production of the stage play of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and in 2006 The Exonerated at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. He will appear next in a production of The Seagull at the Royal Court Theatre. Crook has said that his other ambitions would be to draw and write and he has recently made a deal with the book publisher Faber to illustrate and write a children's book which is at the moment to be called "A Fairy Tale".