David Bailie (also known now as davidbailie) born 1937 in South Africa, emigrated to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), is a British actor, known for his performances on stage, television and film.

He played Dask in the 1977 Doctor Who serial The Robots of Death and also appeared in Blake's 7.

He worked in the 60's and 70's for both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company (5 years)where he was an associate artist.

However, you are most likely to know him for his recent portrayal of the mute pirate Cotton in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.

Bailie is also a professional photographer known as davidbailie.photography see= http://davidbailie.co.uk/ and specialises in Portrait Photography - he has a studio in West Kensington London.

David Bailie was born in 1937 in South Africa, going to boarding school in Swaziland - he emigrated to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with his family in 1952. His first acting experience soon after school in 1955, was an amateur production of 'Doctor in the House' which persuaded him he wanted to be an actor. After leaving school he worked in a bank and then for Central African Airlines. In 1958, he made his first trip from Rhodesia to England to get a lie of the land. In 1960 he moved to England and landed his first small role in the film Flame in the Streets (1960) and then played on of the bells boys in Arthur Koppits "Oh Dad Poor Dad Mama's hung you in the Closet and I'm feeling so Sad" (1961) with Stella Adler playing Madame Rosepettle. He then bluffed his way into Weekly Repertory in Barrow in Furness as Juvenile lead - terrified the while that he would be exposed as totally inexperienced. Recognising the need for training he then auditioned three times for a bursary to RADA - but each time only being accepted as a fee paying student which he couldn't afford - he finally sent for the last of his standby money (£200) he had left in Rhodesia and paid for the first term (1963)- at the end of term- he approached John Fernald who relented and he was given free tuition from the next two years. Terry Hands was also a student at the same time but had left a little earlier than Bailie and formed the Everyman Theatre with Peter James In Liverpool - On leaving RADA Bailie was invited to join the Everyman.(1964) Amongst other roles he played Tolen in The Knack, Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, Dion in The Great God Brown, MacDuff in Macbeth and Lucky in Waiting for Godot After a year there, he came back to London and auditioned for and was accepted by Laurence Olivier joining the National Theatre. He played minor roles and also understudied Sir Laurence Olivier in Love for Love. Terry Hands, who had by now joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at Stratford-upon-Avon, invited Bailie to join them as an associate artist (1965). There he portrayed Florizel opposite Dame Judi Dench's Perdita in 'A Winter's Tale' along with Valentine in Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Bastard in King John, Kozanka in The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising and Leslie in The Madness of Lady Bright. During the early 1970s he worked for Stomu Yamashta at his Red Buddha Theatre. Bailie was cast as the lead in a show called 'Raindog', requiring him to do everything from singing (writing his own songs ???) and dancing, to performing Martial Arts and gymnastics - which he frankly admits been a demand too far and when Yamashta offered him a paltry sum for performing the opportunity was there to depart which he did. He was now cast by David Maloney for the part of the villain Dask in the serial Robots of Death in "Doctor Who" , a long running cult TV series of the 1960/70s. He also played in a number of other series prominent at the time For personal reasons Bailie now had a long recess in his acting career. Between 1980 and 1989 he ran a furniture-making business. In 1990 he closed that down and returned to acting, having in fact to virtually restart his career. It didn't help that at exactly this point he had to have a cancer removed from his lip which required learning to speak again Whilst awaiting work in the acting field he busied himself with Cad design, self-training and writing computer programmes and also doing Health and Safety work in the building industry - in fact busking for a living. In the mid 1990s after playing alongside Brian Glover in Canterbury Tales he made a comeback in the movie business as 'Skewer' in Cutthroat Island (1995), then played an English Judge in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), and also the engineer in Gladiator (2000). Bailie's best known work in film is the role of Cotton, a speechless pirate who has his tongue cut out, so he miraculously trained his parrot, also named Cotton, to read his mind and speak on his behalf. Bailie first appears as Cotton in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) as one of the pirates Jack Sparrow chooses in Tortuga. He is one of the Black Pearl crew-members to survive the Kracken attack in the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). Bailie is also plays Cotton in the third instalment of 'Pirates' Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007). David Bailie also emerged as a radio actor. He played the mad scientist Taren Capel, a re-incarnation of his earlier work from the 60s cult series 'Doctor Who'. David Bailie has two children and re-married (2002) at the start of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He is currently residing in England He has recently declared himself a Professional Photographer!