Robbie Coltrane Has Died
OBE Robbie Coltrane, the stage name of Anthony Robert McMillan (Rutherglen, March 30, 1950 – Larbert, October 14, 2022), was a Scottish actor, comedian, and writer, famous for portraying the half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter film saga.
He was born in Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1950, and studied (sporadically) at Glenalmond College in Perth and Kinross, Glasgow School of Art, and Moray House College of Education in Edinburgh. He began acting at the age of twenty, adopting the stage name Coltrane (in tribute to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane) and working in theater and stand-up comedy. His comedic talents earned him roles in the television series The Comic Strip Presents (1982), and he was one of the stars of Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee (1984).
He soon transitioned to film, landing small roles in numerous movies such as Death Watch (1980), Scrubbers (1983), Absolute Beginners (1986), and Mona Lisa (1986). He also appeared on television in Tutti Frutti (1987), played Samuel Johnson in Blackadder (1987) (a role he later reprised in the more serious Boswell and Johnson’s Tour of the Western Islands (1993), and in various stand-up and sketch comedy shows. He co-starred with Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run (1990) and played the Pope in My Dad’s the Pope (1991). He also portrayed a self-proclaimed private detective who believes he is Humphrey Bogart in the television comedy The Bogie Man.
His roles improved throughout the 1990s with the television series Cracker (1993-1996), which earned him three consecutive British Academy Television Awards for Best Actor, and subsequently in successful films like the two James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), as well as the role of half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (although in long shots, it was not him, but his stunt double, former English rugby player Martin Bayfield, who stands at 208 cm tall). Notably, he also participated as Sergeant Peter Godley in From Hell (2001) by the Hughes brothers.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
