Paul Blackthorne (born 5 March 1969) is a British actor on film, television, and radio. Although born in Shropshire, England, he spent his early childhood on British Military bases in both England and Germany.[1] Blackthorne broke into acting via television commercials in England. His breakthrough commercial in the UK came in the Grim Reaper commercial for Virgin Atlantic, which was hugely successful. Numerous radio commercials followed.
Film
Blackthorne's first silver screen success was as Captain Andrew Russell in the Oscar-nominated Bollywood film, Lagaan. He spent six months learning Hindi for the role.
He also starred in Mindcrime and the festival-winning indie feature length film, Four Corners of Suburbia, winner of both the Crossroads Film Festival in Best Narrative Feature (2006) and in the category of Best Composer at the Avignon Film Festival, Avignon, France (2006).
Additional indie film credits include Bret Easton Ellis's This Is Not an Exit, and a starring role in the British film, The Truth Game. Paul's most recent indie film role is "Jonas Exiler" in Special, with Michael Rapaport.
Television
Minor and supporting roles
In 2002, Blackthorne portrayed British import Doctor Matt Slingerland of Presidio Med and made notable appearances as Guy Morton in the British television series Holby City, Liam MacGregor in Peak Practice, Doctor Jeremy Lawson in NBC's ER and biological terrorist Stephen Saunders on 24. He also made appearances on Medium in two roles (one uncredited as Henry Stoller, Junior), Deadwood, and an episode of Monk Season 5 Episode 10 "Mr. Monk and the Leper" as dermatologist Aaron Polinski. He appeared as Shane Healy, a British musician and husband of Wendy Healy (played by Brooke Shields), in the NBC series Lipstick Jungle for two seasons. He played an Irish terrorist in the US series Burn Notice in 2009 in one episode. In 2010 he appeared in two episodes of Leverage as an arms dealer and in an episode of CSI: Miami directed by Rob Zombie. Later that year he had a recurring role in The Gates as Christian Harper. Also on 7 December 2010, he appeared in the Christmas episode ("Secret Santa") of the SyFy series Warehouse 13.
Lead character
In the Sci Fi Channel's 2007 series, The Dresden Files, Blackthorne portrayed the lead character, professional wizard Harry Dresden.
Blackthorne currently stars as Clark Quitely in the ABC original paranormal/adventure/horror television series The River about a group of people on a mission to find a missing TV explorer in the Amazon.
