Were it not for the untimely death of Richard Harris in 2002, a week before the release of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, leaving vacant the principal's position at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, this obituary probably would not exist. Michael Gambon, who replaced Harris as Albus Dumbledore from Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) to Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2, owes most of his fame outside the UK to his involvement in the Harry Potter saga.
Yet this kindly but shrewd wizard character is not enough to sum up the career of an actor who was not only one of the pillars of British stage, from the 1980s to the turn of the century, but also the star of a seminal series in the history of television – The Singing Detective – and a supporting actor who often overshadowed his leading men on the silver screen. Gambon died of pneumonia in London on Wednesday, September 27, his family announced. He was 82 years old.
Gambon was born in Dublin on October 19, 1940. In 1946, he and his mother joined his father, who had crossed the Irish Sea to participate in the rebuilding of London, earning him dual British and Irish citizenship. As a teenager, he took courses in mechanics, which led to a job with the Vickers-Armstrong aircraft manufacturer.
It was while helping to build sets for an amateur theatre company that he was bitten by the acting bug. Posing as a London actor, he managed to get hired by an Irish company, then joined Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company. There, he played supporting parts until Olivier advised him to move away from London, to try his hand at more serious roles. In Birmingham, he played Othello, Macbeth and Coriolan.
In 1970, he returned to London and dazzled critics and audiences alike in the lead role in The Life of Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht, directed by John Dexter. He then went on to become one of the stars of the contemporary British stage, playing Harold Pinter (taking part in the creation of Betrayal ), David Hare and Alan Ayckbourn. Ayckbourn directed him in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, in 1987, in the role of docker Eddie Carbone. This performance further cemented the actor's reputation.
His physique, which he likened to a "crumpled plastic bag," made him unsuitable for certain roles, starting with Hamlet. This did not prevent him from exuding a sort of authority and charm that were at times irresistible, as the students at Hogwarts came to realize.
Around the same time, he started working in film and television. In 1986, writer Dennis Potter entrusted Gambon with the dual role of The Singing Detective, a detective, poetic and musical series, where he plays both a writer confined to his hospital bed by a disfiguring illness and the hero of the noir novels born of his imagination. The series helped establish the artistic legitimacy of the serial format. On the silver screen, Gambon played the thief in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, (1989) by Peter Greenaway, alongside Richard Bohringer and Helen Mirren.
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