R.I.P. Michael Gambon, Harry Potter‘s Dumbledore
Michael Gambon, who played Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies, died at age 82 after a bout of pneumonia
Aux News Michael Gambon
Michael Gambon, best known for playing Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in most of the Harry Potter movies, has died, according to Variety. He was 82 years old.
In a statement, his family confirmed, “We are devastated to announce the loss of Sir Michael Gambon. Beloved husband and father, Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife Anne and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia.”
Gambon was born in Dublin, Ireland, before moving to England with his family as a child, per the BBC. He began his career on the stage and was a founding member of Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre acting company in London. As a theater actor he won three Olivier Awards and was nominated an additional ten times. He also had a prolific career in film and television, winning four BAFTAs and two Screen Actors Guild Awards (as part of the ensembles of Gosford Park and The King’s Speech).
As extensive and varied as his credits may be, Gambon will likely be best remembered for taking over the role of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. He joined the franchise with the third film, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, after the death of original Dumbledore actor Richard Harris. Fiona Shaw, who played Petunia Dursley, told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that she would remember her co-star “as a trickster, just a brilliant, magnificent trickster.” She said, “He varied his career remarkably and never judged what he was doing, he just played. … With text, there was nothing like him. He could do anything.”
“Magnificent Michael Gambon has died,” Jason Isaacs, who played Lucius Malfoy, posted on Twitter/X. “I learned what acting could be from Michael in The Singing Detective—complex, vulnerable and utterly human. The greatest thrill of being in the Potter films was that he knew my name and shared his fearless, filthy sense of fun with me.”
Gambon is survived by his wife Anne and son Fergus, as well as his longtime partner Philippa Hart and their two sons Michael and William. R.I.P.
80 Comments
I look forward to all the Harry Potter fans pretending they didn’t all hate him in Prisoner of Azkaban. I was there, I remember.
What was the knock on him as Dumbledore? I thought he played it well. Not his fault he was succeeding one of the most-beloved actors of their generation. The first two films are, like the books, basically kids’ movies so the switch wasn’t that noticeable to me.
He was a BAD Dumbledoor for the first few….shouting and pacing, made these grand movements, overacting…where as the character was written as quiet, thoughtful, unbothered.
For me it was the accent. Harris was Irish but didn’t play Dumbledore with an Irish accent. Gambon, although Irish, did not himself have an Irish accent after moving to England when he was young, but for some reason decided to put one on. And at least in his first Potter film, it was not great. Still a fantastic actor though. One of his greatest roles being for the other Potter in his life, Dennis, in The Singing Detective.
I think in Prisoner of Azkaban it was just that he was different than Harris and played the role different.Most of the hate, from what I recall, came during Goblet of Fire when he yelled at Harry and shook him harshly, instead of asking him calmly about whether he put his name in the goblet (as in the books). It became a meme and he was always kinda known as “angry Dumbledore” after that.
He was too cranky, I guess? His performance definitely doesn’t match up with the zany and twee Dumbledore from the earlier books, but later-books Dumbledore is revealed to be kind of a dick, so I was okay with it.
I always felt like he put on his happy face for the youngest students but as they aged he was more forthcoming about what they were up against, especially with Harry and his crew. At some point there’s no point in pretending. Having said all that, I’ll watch the later installations in the series if I come across one channel-flipping on a weekend afternoon but really don’t have much interest in the first two. So Gambon is definitely the Dumbledore I’ve seen the most.
Contemporary takes were that he went from being a stoic reassuring presence to an “Irish hippie” which was a direction Cuarón gave that somehow stuck. They were woefully proven wrong when Gambon showed that he could believably play the most powerful wizard of all time while still showing layers of care laid between his manipulating ambitions for Harry. And then there are the takes that are just the “..Dumbledore said calmly” morons who fail to take directing into account as to why someone could play Dumbledore well or not.
It seems retconning goes together with HP like peanut butter and jelly. I’ve never been a fan of the series and even I remember the response.
Harry Potter’s much more entertaining knowing that everything Harry and Hermione et did in the movies they did with a full load of crap in their shorts because we never see a teacher magic their turds away.
I must not have seen you while I was thoroughly loving it, then.
Yeah, and to me it was always silly, because Gambon was a huge improvement on Richard Harris, who was in failing health and only took the role to please his granddaughter, and it showed. Harris was this legendary hellraiser in real life, but he played Dumbledore like a sleepy old grandpa, when a big point of the character is that he’s a little bit dangerous and disreputable. (Like, the climax of Chamber of Secrets revolves around Harry choosing to trust Dumbledore, and in the movie it’s a total non-event, because why wouldn’t Harry trust the boring kindly magic man?)Gambon, on the other hand, immediately locked into the idea of Dumbledore as, like, a smelly old hippie, which is so much more in the spirit of the character in the book.
How dare you say that about Sir Richard Harris. Gambon was loud, and feverish, and pacing in his first two rather than thoughtful and unbothered…..he was not as you say “locked in”
Oh no, how dare I say the thing that you just agreed with me about! The fact that Gambon was not giving a “thoughtful and unbothered” performance is exactly what I think makes it better than Harris’s inert portrayal.
Gambon as Dumbledore was a nearly perfect choice for those familiar with the novels.Dumbledore had an agenda unknown to the children and most of the other teachers. Always a little sneaky and not 100% ‘pure of heart’. He saw himself fulfilling a destiny, whether or not it was an honorable one. He believed it to be. Gambon knew the character.
I once said (perhaps a little cruelly) that based on the energy of his performance, perhaps someone should have checked if Harris was dead before the movies started shooting.
Azkhaban is my favorite movie in the series. Had absolutely no problem with him in it.
I know I’m totally in the minority, but I hated Prisoner of Azkaban in general (the movie, not the book), not because there was a new Dumbledore.
It’s a good film but a rubbish adaptation.
Hate is a strong word, but never I loved his Dumbledore, and his dying does nothing to change that. Richard Harris will always be the better representation, to me, of book Dumbledore.
Perhaps not in Azkaban specifically, but fans really didn’t love Gambon’s oddly angry take on Dumbledore. The books save the rage for a few good moments, but Gambon would get all weirdly mad – Goblet of Fire was probably the most “offending” example.I liked the gentle humor of Harris, but I don’t know that he could have pulled off the fury of Dumbledore when needed.
I think his take on Dumbledore is always going to be divisive, though he did better in the later films than the earlier ones.I’ll always remember him as Baltus van Tassel, absolutely killing it among a host of other phenomenal actors in Sleepy Hollow.
Yes!! “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Insider” came out right around the time I discovered “The Singing Detective” and I became a Michael Gambon superfan for life. I was genuinely thrilled when I read he was going to be Dumbledore.
My first knowing exposure to him was the facts of life speech he gives at the end of Layer Cake. He really made the most of limited screen time and was always a highlight whenever I saw him in something after. RIP
That raspy laugh when the Cockney mobster reveals he lost all his money.
So goooood!!
2 Dumbledores Down, Jude Law better watch his back
At the current rate, he’s got about 20 years before he really needs to worry.
At first I thought you were referring to his age and there was a terrifying few seconds when I thought Jude Law was in his 60s.
he is by far a lot younger than I thought. Definitely not 3-4 years older than myself. what have I done…
Amazing list of acting credits at every level. I was never a Harry Potter fan and didn’t experience him in that role. To me he’s a modern master heavyweight, brought in to underline that some people and circumstances are very, very bad. Loved him in roles like that- Layer Cake, Open Range, and Sleepy Hollow, which I might just cue up this Halloween.
Open Range is an unfairly overlooked western, and he’s fantastic.“You won’t be laughing when you’re all shot to hell and dyin’!”
I’m very surprised that Diego Luna getting a hugely acclaimed Star Wars role hasn’t led to any kind of major rediscovery of Open Range.
Open Range is my favorite western in the last 20 years, in large part because of Mr. Gambon’s fantastic performance.He was an amazing performer.
Absolutely; I love every shot that has Duvall on a horse, and am glad I saw it in a theater. Feel like it and Thirteen Days get overlooked when we (often deservedly) poke fun at Costner these days.
I think Costner took an appropriate amount of grief for his accent in Thirteen Days, but yeah in general that’s a fantastic movie.
Open Range is great. I usually don’t like Kevin Costner, but everyone else, especially Gambon, made it perfect.
Costner, despite his fairly limited range, is in three of my top 10 favorite movies. Bull Durham, Untouchables and Fandango. Maybe the connecting thread is an outward braggadocio coupled with internal insecurities.
I’ll agree with you about Bull Durham.That is all.
I always found Harry Potter to be entertaining but brutally derivative entertainment. He definitely elevated the material and was pretty much amazing in everything he was in. I wish I had seen him on stage.
He absolutely kills in Layer Cake. Love that flick!
Layer CakeYep and though I know him from others, his voice tone was always stood out to me, very unique.
I always forget how he was in Layer Cake. Such an underrated film, for all folk involved (aside from you know who…).
He was a hell of a driver! Here’s to great lap times in the afterlife.https://www.topgear.com/car-news/top-gear-tv/great-sir-michael-gambon-has-passed-away
Beat me to it. So good they named the corner for him.
If short of time skip forward to 5:00 onwards.
He got that box in to the air! Fantastic.
RIP to a great former homosexual.
I know most people will remember him from Harry Potter, but I’ll never forget his performance in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover.
I know, right!?
I thought that TCTTHWAHL was among the most pretentious films I have ever seen. I know, I know – given that it’s Greenaway that we’re talking about here, I shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.
And yet, that’s his most commercially appealing movie.
I remember him mostly fondly for his work with Wes Anderson. He is hysterical as the head psycho farmer in Fantastic Mr Fox. Especially the part where he interrupts a worker who is making up a song with THAT’S A BAD SONG YOUR A BAD SONGWRITER!!!
Philip! Dynamite!
What sort of expression is the lad wearing on his face?
You wrote a bad song, Petey!
I’ve often wondered if the bit where Franklin Bean systematically destroys the interior of his trailer might have been a nod towards Gambon’s (jaw-dropping, terrifying) performance in a similar scene in The Thief, The Cook, His Wife, and Her Lover…
I really hope so. Wes is that kind of guy, hell he named a character in Astroid City, Auggie and he is a photographer, which I’m almost positive is a nod to the movie Smoke where Harvey Kitel plays a store owner and photographer named Auggie.
He was the epitome of 1% menace in THE INSIDER. His okra-ooze drawl as he fucked with Jeffrey’s life like he was pulling the wings off a fly.
IIRC he’s only in that one scene, but he really leaves his mark on that movie. It’s such a perfectly oily performance.
He didn’t look familiar to me at all in that movie, then he opened his mouth and I knew his voice SO WELL, but it still took me a bit to place it (apparently I’d missed the credits).
What I remember him most for is not Harry Potter or The King’s Speech, but a 2002 HBO movie, Path to War, where he plays the lead role of LBJ.Gambon just absolutely flies with the part, from bitter to brooding to pretentious to supremely self confident to obsequious, which if you’re going to portray LBJ is the exact way you need to do it – and blows the later Woody Harrelson and Bryan Cranston performances (among others) out of the water. It’s probably far too sympathetic a portrayal of the administration to be great history, but it’s the closest anyone has ever gotten to capturing the man on screen.RIP.
I saw him onstage back in 2002 in A Number opposite Daniel Craig and their performances scrambled my brain in the best way. A great talent indeed.
Got to see him and Daniel Craig in the West End, at the last preview performance of A Number by Caryl Churchill before it officially opened the following day. It was a sparse, riveting one-act play that would’ve made a HELL of a Black Mirror episode.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Number
Gambon is survived by his wife Anne…, as well as his longtime partner Philippa Hart…Okay, Gambon… damn…
I first knew him from Toys, an uneven movie but a great performance. Man was a master.
An unforgettable movie (if you saw it) I’m shocked to see so under-remembered in the article.
I’ve never really felt the need to revisit TCTTHWAHL, even though two of my favorite things in life are seriously “A Zed and Two Noughts” and “The Singing Detective”. It’s the cannibalism, honestly – I can’t. Even though it’s not until the end, I just can’t.
Well, the word I did use was “unforgettable.” Nothing you said contradicts that.
From stage to film, he was the real deal.
I had the privilege of seeing him perform (with Liz Smith) in Beckett’s Endgame. It’s a tribute to his acting skills that only a very few people walked out.
He’ll always be Albert Spica in my heart.
I only know him as Dumbledore, and whatever your thoughts about JKR or the quality of her writing, the Harry Potter franchise was a major part of my childhood and I’ll always remember Gambon fondly for his role in it. Guy was a good Dumbledore.
If you haven’t seen The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, I suggest doing so. It’s bizarre as hell!