Early roles In 1951, McCallum became
assistant stage manager of the
Glyndebourne Opera Company. He began his acting career doing boy voices for BBC Radio in 1947 and taking bit parts in British films from the late 1950s. His first acting role was in
Whom the Gods Love, Die Young playing a doomed royal. A
James Dean-themed photograph of McCallum caught the attention of the
Rank Organisation, who signed him in 1956. However, in an interview with
Alan Titchmarsh broadcast on 3 November 2010, McCallum stated that he had actually held his
Equity card since 1946. His early roles included an outlaw in
Robbery Under Arms (1957) (where he met future wife Jill Ireland), junior radio operator
Harold Bride in
A Night to Remember (1958), and a juvenile delinquent in
Violent Playground (1958). His first American film was
Freud: The Secret Passion (1962), directed by
John Huston, which was shortly followed by a role in
Peter Ustinov's
Billy Budd. McCallum played
Lt. Cmdr. Eric Ashley-Pitt in
The Great Escape, which was released in 1963. He took the role of
Judas Iscariot in 1965's
The Greatest Story Ever Told. His other television roles included two appearances on
The Outer Limits in the episodes "The Sixth Finger" (1963) and "The Forms of Things Unknown" (1964), and a guest appearance on
Perry Mason in 1964 as defendant Phillipe Bertain in "The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman".
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The Man from U.N.C.L.E., intended as a vehicle for
Robert Vaughn, made McCallum into a
sex symbol, his
Beatle-style blond haircut providing a trendy contrast to Vaughn's clean-cut appearance. McCallum's role as the mysterious Russian agent
Illya Kuryakin was originally conceived as a peripheral one. In fact, McCallum recalled in a 1998 interview that "I'd never heard of the word 'sidekick' before", when presented by his character's description for the first time. McCallum, however, took the opportunity to construct a complex character whose appeal rested largely in what was shadowy and enigmatic about him. Hero worship even led to a record, "Love Ya, Illya", performed by
Alma Cogan under the name Angela and the Fans, which was a
pirate radio hit in Britain in 1966. A 1990s rock-rap group from Argentina named itself
Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas in honour of
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. character. McCallum received two
Emmy Award nominations in the course of the show's four-year run (1964–1968) for playing the intellectual and introverted secret agent. McCallum and Vaughn reprised their roles of Kuryakin and
Napoleon Solo in the 1983 television film,
Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.. In 1986, McCallum reunited with Vaughn again in an episode of
The A-Team entitled "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair", complete with "chapter titles", the word "affair" in the title, the phrase "Open Channel D", and similar scene transitions. In an interview for a retrospective television special, McCallum recounted a visit to the
White House during which, while he was being escorted to meet the U.S. president, a
Secret Service agent told him, "You're the reason I
got this job."
After The Man from U.N.C.L.E. McCallum never quite repeated the popular success he had gained as Kuryakin until
NCIS, though he did become a familiar face on British television in such shows as
Colditz (1972–1974),
Kidnapped (1978), and
ITV's science-fiction series
Sapphire & Steel (1979–1982) opposite
Joanna Lumley. In 1975, he played the title character in a short-lived American series
The Invisible Man. McCallum appeared on stage in Australia in
Run for Your Wife (1987–1988), and the production toured the country. Other members of the cast were
Jack Smethurst,
Eric Sykes and
Katy Manning. McCallum played supporting parts in a number of feature films, and he played the title role in the 1968 thriller,
Sol Madrid. McCallum starred with
Diana Rigg in the 1989 TV miniseries
Mother Love. In 1991 and 1992, McCallum played gambler John Grey, one of the principal characters in the television series
Trainer. He appeared as an English literature teacher in a 1989 episode of
Murder, She Wrote. In the 1990s, McCallum guest-starred in two American television series. In season 1 of
seaQuest DSV, he appeared as the law-enforcement officer Frank Cobb of the fictional Broken Ridge of the Ausland Confederation, an underwater mining camp off the coast of Australia by the
Great Barrier Reef; he also had a guest-star role in one episode of
Babylon 5 as Dr. Vance Hendricks in the Season 1 episode "Infection". In 1994, McCallum narrated the acclaimed documentaries
Titanic: The Complete Story for
A&E Networks. This was the second project about the
Titanic on which he had worked: the first was the 1958 film
A Night to Remember, in which he had had a small role. In the same year, McCallum hosted and narrated the TV special
Ancient Prophecies. This special, which was followed soon after by three others, told of people and places historically associated with foretelling the
end of the world and the beginnings of new eras for mankind. In 1997, McCallum had a guest role in Season 7, Episode 22 of
Law & Order, playing the neighbour of the murder victim.
NCIS Beginning in 2003, starting with the
original backdoor pilot on the series
JAG, McCallum starred in the
CBS television series
NCIS as Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard, the team's chief
medical examiner and one of the show's most popular characters. In Season 2 Episode 13 "The Meat Puzzle", NCIS Special Agent
Caitlin Todd (
Sasha Alexander) asks Special Agent
Leroy Jethro Gibbs (
Mark Harmon), "What did Ducky look like when he was younger?" and Gibbs replies, "Illya Kuryakin". According to the behind-the-scenes feature on the 2006 DVD of
NCIS season 1, McCallum became an expert in
forensics to play Mallard, including attending
medical examiner conventions. In the feature,
Donald P. Bellisario says that McCallum's knowledge became so vast that at the time of the interview, he was considering making him a
technical adviser to the show. McCallum appeared at the 21st Annual James Earl Ash Lecture, held 19 May 2005 at the
Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, an evening for honouring America's service members. His lecture, "Reel to Real Forensics", with Cmdr. Craig T. Mallak, U.S. Armed Forces medical examiner, featured a presentation comparing the real-life work of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner staff with that of the fictional naval investigators appearing on
NCIS. In late April 2012, it was announced that McCallum had reached an agreement on a two-year contract extension with CBS-TV. The move meant that he would remain an
NCIS regular past his eightieth birthday. In May 2014 he signed another two-year contract. He signed an extension in 2016, ==Music career==