his professional stage debut in the Simon Bent play Goldhawk Road at the Bush Theatre, directed by Paul Miller. In 1997 - 1999, he played lead role of Danny Kavanagh in The Lakes, a BBC series written by Jimmy McGovern. In 1999, he starred as Jip in the award-winning cult clubbing film Human Traffic and as Eddie in Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland. In 2000, he starred in the opening episode of the BBC drama Clocking Off, written by Paul Abbott, with whom he would work again in 2002 when he starred as Cal McCaffrey in the multi-award-winning political thriller series State of Play. Simm also played the lead role of loan shark John Parlour in Tony Marchant's Never Never for Channel 4. In 2002, Simm featured in the film 24 Hour Party People as New Order frontman Bernard Sumner. It was also this year that he played Raskolnikov in the BBC adaptation of Crime and Punishment, adapted by Tony Marchant. Marchant also wrote The Knight's Tale, one of a series of modern reworkings of The Canterbury Tales, in which Simm played Ace. Later that year, Simm starred opposite Christina Ricci and John Hurt in the film Miranda. In 2004, he played the researcher and charity investigator Daniel Appleton in the BAFTA award-winning Channel 4 drama Sex Traffic, which followed the plight of two young Moldovan sisters sold into sexual slavery: earning Simm a best actor nomination at the 20th Gemini Awards. After playing Dr. Bruce Flaherty in Howard Davies' production of Joe Penhall's Blue/Orange, Simm starred as Detective Inspector Sam Tyler in the 2006 BBC series Life on Mars, playing a police officer sent back in time to 1973. The show won the Pioneer Audience Award for Best Programme at the 2007 BAFTA TV Awards, Simm was nominated but lost out on the award for Best Actor. In March 2007, he starred in Channel 4's The Yellow House, a biographical drama produced by Talkback Thames, about the turbulent relationship of artists Vincent van Gogh (Simm) and Paul Gauguin (John Lynch) when they shared a home named The Yellow House for several months; the production is based on Martin Gayford's book, also titled The Yellow House. In the same year, Simm returned to the theatre as the title character in Paul Miller's acclaimed Bush Theatre staging of Simon Bent's version of Elling, a comedy about two men just out of a psychiatric