A true giant on and off the screen: Beloved Harry Potter star Robbie Coltrane dies at 72 

As fans of Harry Potter and James Bond well knew, Robbie Coltrane could be a hero one minute and a villain the next.

He was paternal Hagrid, the hulking giant gamekeeper at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films, as well as the unscrupulous ex-KGB agent and mob boss Valentin Zukovsky in two Bond films, GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough.

And if Dr. Eddie ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald in the ’90s series Cracker, the show that sealed his fame, he was something between good guy and bad guy – a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking and mildly menacing criminal psychologist who despised the police almost as much as he despised the criminals. did.

Indeed, ‘often imminent’ could apply to almost anything he did in an acting career that tragically ended with the announcement last night that he had died in hospital near Falkirk at the age of 72.

His agent Belinda Wright described Coltrane as a “unique talent” and added that his role as Hagrid “brought joy to children and adults alike around the world.”

She continued: ‘He was not only a great actor, but also forensically intelligent, brilliantly witty. After forty years of proud to be called his agent, I will miss him.’

Harry Potter creator JK Rowling described him as an “incredible talent” and a “complete one-off”.

Stephen Fry recalled their first appearance together in the 1983 comedy Alfresco, saying Coltrane was “funny enough to cause helpless hiccups and honking.”

Off-screen, he could be just as versatile as on-screen — leaving interviewers never quite sure whether he’d be the former stand-up comedian and let them down, or the persistent misanthrope who’d bite their heads off for it. asking a ‘silly’ question .

“Robbie was able to show a presence that was really dangerous,” says Cracker producer Gub Neal, explaining why he cast him as the star.

“It’s partly a physical thing—if he didn’t like you, he could hurt you—but he also has an intelligence that could abuse you.”

He drank heavily — a bottle of whiskey a day, he claimed at one point. He dabbled with drugs and ate too much — his binge eating once pushed his weight to over 20 stones.

His friend, the late actor John Sessions, said Coltrane had a “strong self-destructive streak” and a “deep, driving melancholy.” Coltrane once said of himself, “Drink is my downfall. I can drink a liter of beer and not feel the least bit drunk.’

He was also combative — in his hell-raising heyday in the 1990s, he was known for biting a chunk out of a wine glass and twisting it around his mouth.

But, like so many actors, his public image was far from the truth. The man who epitomized Glasgow’s hard-hitting, hard-hearted working class was actually the chic-accented product of one of Scotland’s brightest boys’ boarding schools.

Coltrane, whose real name was Anthony Robert McMillan (he took his stage name from his favorite jazz musician, John Coltrane), was raised in the chic suburb of Rutherglen of Glasgow by his Calvinist parents.

He claimed his father was so busy with his job as a police surgeon that he barely spoke to his son until he was six. He died of lung cancer when Coltrane was still a teenager.

He attended Glenalmond College in Perth and Kinross, also known as Scotland’s Eton.

A class fighter from a young age, Coltrane liked to complain bitterly about how he rebelled against the senseless rules there – he said he was nearly expelled after hanging the gowns of some prefects from the clock tower.

He felt more at home at the Glasgow School of Art, where his accent earned him the nickname ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’. There he acquired another nickname – ‘Red Robbie’ – in tribute to his support for the Labor Party and fiercely anti-Tory views.

But art wasn’t his thing and he dropped the subject. “It was a horrible feeling. The ideas weren’t on the canvas at all’, he recalls. So he turned to comedy and acting, moved to London and lived in a squat.

He tried some stand-up and started acting slowly, an early break came in, of all things, Are You Being Served?. His first film role was credited as “Man at Airfield” in the 1980 action-adventure Flash Gordon, although his first serious role was in the drama Mona Lisa six years later.

He had more success on TV: In the 1980s he became an increasingly well-known part of the alternative comedy team, along with Adrian Edmonson, Rik Mayall and Jennifer Saunders, with appearances on TV shows such as The Comic Strip Presents, The Young Ones and Blackadder.

He also played the lead singer of a boisterous Scottish rock and roll band in Tutti Frutti.

Coltrane struggled with alcoholism and his artist girlfriend Robin Paine said she ended a long on-again, off-again relationship with him because she couldn’t handle his lifestyle.

His attempts to break into Hollywood with two disappointing films – Nuns On The Run and The Pope Must Die – convinced Coltrane to move from comedy to more serious roles.

Jimmy McGovern, who wrote Cracker, wanted Robert Lindsay for the part, but Coltrane was a perfect fit. It earned him three consecutive Bafta awards.

In the late 1980s, when he was almost 40, he met an 18-year-old student, Rhona Gemmell. They had a son, Spencer, in 1992 and daughter, Alice, in 1998 and moved to a remote farm near Loch Lomond.

They married in 1999 and separated four years later. Coltrane, famed for his private life, was rarely candid about his personal life, but admitted, “You can’t live the life of an existential hero and be a good father.”

When the casting for the first Harry Potter film began in 2000, JK Rowling insisted that Coltrane get the part of Hagrid.

“Robbie is just perfect for Hagrid, because Hagrid is a really sweet character, but he had to have a certain toughness,” she said. “I think Robbie does that perfectly.”

He continued to have health problems. In January 2015, he was taken to a Florida hospital after experiencing flu-like symptoms on a transatlantic flight to attend a Harry Potter theme park event.

Coltrane rarely liked to reveal that he had a soft side, but the huge icon he became with kids because of Hagrid clearly influenced him.

He got emotional during a televised reunion of the stars of the film, which aired earlier this year.

“The legacy of the movies is that my children’s generation will show them to their children,” he said.

“So you could look at it in 50 years, easy. I won’t be there, unfortunately. But Hagrid does, yes.’