Peter Szymon Serafinowicz (/ˌsɛrəˈfɪnəwɪtʃ/ SERR-ə-FIN-ə-witch; born 10 July 1972) is an English actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for his roles as the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Pete in Shaun of the Dead (2004), and Garthan Saal in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). He has also appeared in many British and American comedy series. He starred as the titular character in the 2016 live-action series of The Tick, and has been praised for his political satire parody videos in which he voices a camp version of Donald Trump.
Peter Szymon Serafinowicz was born in the Liverpool suburb of Gateacre on 10 July 1972, the son of post office worker Catherine (née Geary) and scaffolder Szymon Serafinowicz. His father, who was born and raised in Surrey before moving to Liverpool, was the son of a Polish mother and Belarusian father. Serafinowicz has a brother, James, who became a film producer, and a sister, Helen, who became a writer and married Irish comedian Graham Linehan after Serafinowicz introduced them. At the age of three, he moved with his family to the Belle Vale area of Liverpool, where he attended Our Lady of the Assumption Primary School. The family moved back to Gateacre when Serafinowicz was 14, and he attended St Francis Xavier's College in the nearby suburb of Woolton. He said in 2011, "I had a very happy childhood, but Belle Vale was very rough. It was very pretty. I was only about three when we moved there, but I can still remember it looking very shiny, and it was all landscaped. But it was a very poor area, and it became scruffy quite quickly. Gateacre is traditionally seen as one of the posh areas of Liverpool. It wasn't really that much posher!"