On September 27, local time in the United Kingdom, veteran actor Michael Gambon, who played the role of Dumbledore, the principal of the wizarding school in the movie "Harry Potter" series, died of pneumonia in the hospital at the age of 82. age.

After hearing the bad news, a large number of "Harry Potter" fans around the world were deeply saddened. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, etc. who had co-produced the film series with Gambon, as well as the original "Harry Potter" The author, J.K. Rowling, posted condolences on social media, recalling the warm moments of working with her.

Michael Gambon was born on October 19, 1940, in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. When he was six years old, he moved to London with his family to settle down. He attended Catholic schools all the way. After obtaining a technical diploma, he came to the British Vickers-Armstrong Arms Factory and became an apprentice. However, besides tinkering with lathes, Gambon had a keen interest in theatre. With his skillful hands, he worked as a set decorator in an amateur theater troupe, but slowly he discovered that what he really longed for was a stage. It's just that unlike most British actors who graduated from majors at the same time, Gambon never received acting training in a specialized school. He relied entirely on his own thinking and slowly accumulated performance experience in amateur drama clubs.

Michael Gambon

In his twenties, Gambon finally became a professional stage actor. At the British National Theater led by Laurence Olivier, he started from supporting roles and worked his way up to starring roles. He was nominated for the Olivier Award 13 times in his life and won three times. At the beginning of 2015, because it became increasingly difficult to memorize his lines, the elderly Gambon announced that he would bid farewell to theater performances, ending his more than half a century of stage career.

Back in 1965, 25-year-old Gambon came into contact with movies for the first time. This experience was actually inseparable from drama. His sidekick Laurence Olivier starred in the film version of "Othello", which was essentially a screen reproduction of the live stage performance, but it was more authentic and won multiple Oscar nominations that year. Gambon, who was still a newcomer at the time, played a small supporting role in the film. Although he was at the bottom of the cast, he still had experience in screen acting.

Two years later, he made his television debut, but still couldn't get around Shakespeare. Gambon played a small role in "Much Ado About Nothing" produced and broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and thus became a versatile actor in film, television and stage. However, it was the TV series "The Singing Detective" aired in 1986 that really made British TV audiences remember his name.

Stills from "The Singing Detective"

"The Singer" may not be well known in China, but it ranked 20th on the "Top 100 British Dramas List" voted by the British Film Institute (BFI) in 2000. Gambon plays two roles in the play: one is Marlowe, a detective novel writer who suffers from a skin disease, and the other is the male lead in the detective novel Marlowe is writing - a resident cabaret singer also named Marlowe. . In 2003, Hollywood remade the play into a movie of the same name, starring Robert Downey Jr., who had not yet become "Iron Man" at the time. However, the reviews of the movie and the starring role were far less than those of the TV series version.

Stills from "The Chef, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover"

In addition to television, Gambon also made many masterpieces in movies in the 1980s and 1990s, such as playing the role of "The Thief" in Peter Greenaway's masterpiece "The Chef, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover". He also played the evil toy company successor in the Hollywood movie "Toy Corps" starring Robin Williams. After entering the new century, he fully demonstrated his golden supporting role in various ensemble dramas such as "Gosford Park", "The King's Speech", "The Life Aquatic" and "The Secret Service".

Stills from "The Life Aquatic"

Of course, Gambon's most familiar role to global audiences is Dumbledore, who he played since "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" released in 2004. The role of Dumbledore in the previous series "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" was played by actor Richard Harris, who was also born in Ireland, but was much older than Gambon. Harris, who was ten years older, unfortunately passed away in October 2002. After the producers failed to contact Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen and others, they finally invited Gambon to take over.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" stills

Although the outside world had criticized Gambon's version of Principal Dumbledore for being too loud and not elegant enough, and he only interpreted the characters according to the script and never read the original novel, which also angered many "original novels" Party", but as time passed, the vast majority of the audience eventually accepted the old principal played by Michael Gambon.