Harry Potter: Hagrid in Harry Potter, died at the age of 72.
Robbie Coltrane, the baby-faced comedian and character actor who played a crime-solving psychologist on the TV show “Cracker” and the gentle half-giant Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” films, has died. He was 72.
Belinda Wright, Coltrane’s agent, confirmed his death on Friday at a hospital in his native Scotland but did not provide further details. In one of many tributes to him, she called him “forensically intelligent” and “brilliantly witty.”
J.K. Rowling, who said decades ago that Coltrane was her first choice to play Hagrid, tweeted on Friday that he was “an incredible talent, a complete one-off.
Coltrane changed his name to John Coltrane in honor of jazz artist John Coltrane while he was in his early 20s. Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan in Rutherglen, Scotland.
When he made his breakthrough as a tough detective in “Cracker,” the 1990s TV series for which he won the best actor at the British Academy Television Awards three times, he already had a distinguished screen career, with credits that included “Mona Lisa,” “Nuns on the Run,” and Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of “Henry V.”
As the young wizard’s mentor, he continued to appear in all eight “Harry Potter” films. He also played a variety of other roles, such as a Russian crime boss in the James Bond thrillers “GoldenEye” and “The World is Not Enough,” as well as Pip’s guardian Mr. Jaggers in a 2012 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations.” More recently, he won praise for his performance in the 2016 miniseries “National Treasure” as a beloved TV star who might be hiding a sinister secret.
Eric Idle, a co-star in “Nuns on the Run,” tweeted on Friday that he had been discussing Coltrane and “wondering where he was” when he learned of his passing.
“What a brilliant and bright dude. a master actor, a comic who is incredibly amusing, and a fantastic actor.
