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      Zar Amir Ebrahimi, an Iranian Exile, Channels Trauma in ‘Holy Spider’

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      Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who had to flee Iran after an intimate tape was leaked, has been transfixed by the protests erupting there as her film “Holy Spider” is released in the U.S.“I know that fear, I know that humiliation,” Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the winner of the best actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, said in a recent interview. “I know how men in Iran use their power to keep you quiet.”Ebrahimi is an Iranian exile who, in 2008, decided she had to flee after being subjected to a smear campaign based on her love life. Now, that experience and her role in the film “Holy Spider,” which opens in theaters in the United States on Oct. 28, have intersected with disarming intensity, as women in Iran burn their head scarves to protest the oppression of the Islamic Republic.The story of Rahimi, the fictional investigative journalist at the heart of “Holy Spider,” is one of female defiance in the face of male violence. Based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei, a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes in the Iranian city of Mashhad, a religious center, the movie traces with unflinching, sometimes harrowing, intimacy Rahimi’s efforts to penetrate the world of men obfuscating Hanaei’s crimes.“We need to finish this story,” Ebrahimi said, her pale eyes burning, during the 75-minute interview in Paris. “This Islamic Republic has to end. Women today know their rights. They know what life and freedom of expression are. It will take time and blood, but there is no other way.”It took time and flexibility to make “Holy Spider,” which is directed by Ali Abbasi, an Iranian exile based in Copenhagen. Filming was impossible in Iran, given the government’s hostility to the project, and months of preparation in Turkey came to nothing when the Turkish authorities, apparently under pressure from Tehran, blocked the production. The young Iranian actress who was set to play Rahimi withdrew, abruptly overcome by fear of reprisal, just as filming was about to start in Jordan, according to Ebrahimi.“I got so angry with her,” said Ebrahimi, who was then the casting director for the movie. “And I think that night when I got so crazy, I’m pretty sure that Ali saw something in me.”So, in extremis, Ebrahimi, 41, who found fame in the early 2000s as a star of the Iranian TV soap opera “Narges,” took on the lead role. Given all of these obstacles, it is, Ebrahimi told me, “a miracle that we have it to screen.”In “Holy Spider,” Ebrahimi plays a journalist investigating a serial killer.UtopiaThe killer, played by Mehdi Bajestani, is based on the true story of Saeed Hanaei.UtopiaAbbasi, the film’s director, said he wanted to challenge the image of “the Islamic Republic and its leaders as some sort of theocratic, dry people who are very conservative.” At a deeper level, he suggested, “these people are obsessed with sexuality.” Iran is a country, he said, where the authorities “get some sort of pleasure out of humiliating women.”For the director, who visited Mashhad as part of his preparations for the movie, “there is a Lynchian undercurrent of fetishized suppressed sexuality in every aspect of the Islamic Republic.”His words brought to mind a meeting I had in the holy Iranian city of Qum in 2009. A mullah sat on a raised dais as he explained in measured terms the rationale of the Islamic Republic. Then the subject turned to women. How could any man not lose control, he suddenly frothed, if women’s hair and the curves of their bodies were allowed to be seen in public? This was the gateway to hell, he shouted.Ebrahimi’s life as an actor in Iran had fallen apart a few years before that meeting, when a video of lovemaking she said she had made with her boyfriend at the time was leaked by a friend, another actor, who somehow stole it when at their apartment. It became known as the “sex tape case,” and the hounding of Ebrahimi knew no bounds.“All these people were watching my naked body and just kept copying the video and selling it in the street,” she said. “And I had to lie every day and just say it was not me, and I can’t tell you how painful it all was. Not because I was ashamed of what I did, but because of the betrayal from my colleagues and this whole society.”The government set about finding every man with whom she had shaken hands, or been photographed, she said; every man she had ever kissed on the cheek. It was clear her career in Iran was over. She was about to confront her various accusers in court, facing a prison sentence and 97 lashes on the charge of having sexual relationships outside wedlock, when she decided to flee.Ebrahimi flew to Azerbaijan, she said, and later from there to Paris, where she has since built a life. She has not returned to Iran, where most of her family still lives, and became a French citizen in 2017.After fleeing Iran, Ebrahimi settled in Paris. She said she had not returned.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, as antigovernment protests have spread across Iran and more than 200 people have been killed, Ebrahimi has been transfixed. Watching a new generation resisting arrest and shouting, “I don’t want this hijab, what’s your problem with my hair?” has given her hope.“I saw these images of three actresses throwing away their hijabs, saying we don’t want to lie anymore, we don’t want to hide ourselves,” Ebrahimi said, “and I figure if they arrived at this point, the whole of society is kind of there.”At the same time, she says she knows that the guardians of the Islamic Republic will resist to the end. “The last foundation they have for the regime is women and imposing the hijab,” Ebrahimi said. “They believe if the hijab comes off, everything will be destroyed — the Islamic Republic will tumble down.”Ebrahimi said she felt a lot of emotion that her film was arriving in American theaters at the same time as the protests; it feels like “all these things are happening in the same direction,” she said.“We can’t be controlled by them anymore,” Ebrahimi said. “We can’t hide ourselves and play this game. We grew up learning how to lie. There are 84 million people in Iran, and they are 84 million actors. Lying, existing inside and outside. Lying inside to our parents that we didn’t meet someone outside, lying outside that we don’t party inside.”In making the film, Ebrahimi drew on these experiences of being humiliated by an oppressive government. Her trauma became a source of inspiration and resolve.Rahimi, determined to find the murderer who keeps dumping strangled women on the outskirts of town, and driven by the memory of how an overbearing male editor had abused her, encounters forms of male contempt and evasion.She meets a mullah who assures her that every effort is being made to solve the crimes, even as he hints that it may be God’s will that these female sinners be eliminated. She encounters various men who form a protective shield around the killer, admired in his community as a husband, father and war veteran. She confronts a police officer who comes to her hotel room and tries to seduce her, dangling the possibility of information for sex.“We worked on that scene with the policeman for two hours, and I saw that I could link my personal experience of life to this journalist,” Ebrahimi said. “She was living inside me, and you know, improvisation is an important part of Ali’s work. I came up with the idea of the memory of harassment by a colleague and editor as the motivating force for the journalist.”The film is about female defiance in the face of male violence. “Women today know their rights,” Ebrahimi said about Iran, where protests have erupted recently. “They know what life and freedom of expression are.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesEbrahimi, who received threats from the Islamic Republic soon after she won the award at Cannes, including an allusion by the culture ministry to the fate of the author Salman Rushdie, said that the impact of living in Iran “affects men, too. If they drink or not, if they read something or not — there is this continuous pressure to deceive.”Hanaei’s crimes were called the “spider killings” by local news media because of how he carried them out. He confessed to killing 16 women, and was executed in 2002. In “Holy Spider,” the character is played with psychological intricacy by Mehdi Bajestani. He is desperate to believe that he is doing God’s will, and that of the Islamic Republic, by killing prostitutes. The pressure on him grows. He snaps at his wife. He feels suspicion growing.“I think he’s kind of a victim of the whole society, of the whole mind-set,” Ebrahimi said.At one point, his wife surprises him at home after a murder. He hurriedly wraps the corpse in a carpet. His wife finds him tense and impenetrable; she coaxes him to have sex. On top of his wife, sweating, thrusting, he sees the foot of the strangled prostitute sticking out from the carpet.“He has something of what I call Travis Bickle syndrome,” Abbasi said, a reference to the hero of “Taxi Driver.” “Back from a war, in an existential black hole, missing the violence. And in that scene, sexual pleasure and violence juxtapose each other.”“It’s a movie about a serial killer,” Ebrahimi said, “but also about a serial-killer society. I know, because at some point, I got killed actually by each person in that society, except perhaps 10 percent who still had my back.”She continued: “I sometimes think, for an actress, I’m happy to have this much pain in my life, to have experienced this sex tape story. I put everything into the movie, all my life.”When at last Rahimi finds the killer by impersonating a prostitute, he asks her name.“Zahra,” she says, falsely.“This was pure improvisation,” Ebrahimi said. “It was not in the script. I said ‘Zahra,’ which is my real name, even if I don’t use it anymore.” More

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      ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Barrels Into Awards Season

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      At a screening filled with Oscar voters, Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and the directors marveled at the way their quirky film has struck a chord.LOS ANGELES — You make a movie because you hope people will respond to it, but no one involved with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” expected all of this, the cast and crew kept telling me in the reception area of a luxe Westwood theater on Tuesday night. The “this” in question was a tastemaker party with Oscar voters and industry veterans meant to reposition the indie hit as an awards contender. But the bigger “this,” the one that really boggled them, was the fact that they were embarking on a monthslong awards campaign to begin with.“We did press all through the summer, and then took a break and thought, ‘This will all die down. The feelings will die down, the excitement will die down,’” said Daniel Kwan, who co-directed the film with Daniel Scheinert. “And then we came back and somehow it’s gotten even stronger. At one of the screenings, someone came up to me and said, ‘This is my 14th time watching the movie!’”Passion counts for a lot during awards season, and “Everything Everywhere” has plenty of it: This sci-fi comedy about a Chinese immigrant and laundromat owner (Michelle Yeoh) who becomes the multiverse’s last hope earned stellar reviews in its March release, played for several months in theaters, and made more than $100 million worldwide on a $14.3 million budget. In doing so, it became A24’s highest-grossing title and reinvigorated a specialty-film market that has been ailing since the pandemic began.When the film was released and an awards campaign was suggested, Scheinert said, “I full-on thought it was a joke.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesFrom right, Yeoh, Kwan and Quan. The director said one fan had told him about seeing the movie 14 times.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThough I expect the film will be nominated in several categories at the Oscars, including best picture, it hasn’t taken a traditional path toward that goal. Instead of debuting at a prestigious fall film festival, “Everything Everywhere” chose a raucous spring premiere at South by Southwest, and it was released in theaters on March 25, a time when awards attention was trained exclusively on the Oscar ceremony held that weekend.The film will also have to win over older voters, who may prove more resistant to its wacky charms, since “Everything Everywhere” is laden with sight gags and traffics heavily in down-market genres like sci-fi, action and gross-out comedy. Could it surmount all of those hurdles and become the first significant Oscar contender to feature a dildo fight scene? (If “Frost/Nixon” happened to have one, please write in to remind me.)“I full-on thought it was a joke when this was coming out and they said, ‘What if it’s awards-y?’” Scheinert said. “It was an ode to ‘Jackass’ and Stephen Chow movies!”Still, there is a potent emotional core to the film that has moved audiences: As Yeoh’s Evelyn explores the multiverse, she comes to better understand the people who used to get on her nerves, including her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and even her tax auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). And that empathy extends off the screen, to the movie’s stars: Quan, the first actor to show up at the party, was mobbed by well-wishers eager to praise his sensitive performance. “I was so famished for a role like this,” the 51-year-old Quan told me. “Famished!”After breakout child-star parts in the 1980s as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies,” Quan’s good fortune quickly evaporated. “I was faced with a horrible reality and I had to step away because the phone stopped ringing,” he said. “Hollywood didn’t write roles for Asian actors.”In 2000, a disillusioned Quan moved behind the camera to work in stunt choreography, though he continued to pay his Screen Actors Guild dues every month without question: “Maybe subconsciously, I was thinking, just be patient.”“How often does a man in his 50s get a chance like this?” Quan asked.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesAfter watching “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018, he was inspired to return to acting and called an agent friend to represent him; two weeks later, that agent sent him “Everything Everywhere,” which let him play a character who was underestimated, sweet-natured, fierce and romantic all at once.“To have this as my comeback movie and to get this recognition and warm embrace? I’ve cried so much in the last six months from reading the comments or from people coming up to me,” Quan said.Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.A Lovelorn Romantic: A child star in the 1980s, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.The Costume Designer: Shirley Kurata, who defined the look of the movie, has a signature style that mixes vintage, high-end designers and an intense color wheel.Aiming for the Oscars: At a screening meant to reposition the indie hit as an awards contender, actors and directors marveled at the way their quirky film has struck a chord.The most meaningful interaction came in September at Disney’s starry D23 convention, where Quan went to promote his role in the coming season of the Marvel series “Loki.” Harrison Ford was there touting the fifth “Indiana Jones” film, due next year, and though Quan worried his old co-star wouldn’t recognize him, the actor turned, pointed and said, “Are you Short Round?”“Yes, Indy,” Quan replied. And as they embraced, memories came flooding back from the beginning of Quan’s career, which has now regained its initial promise.“How often does a man in his 50s get a chance like this? How often do actors get a second act?” Quan asked. “I really hope that if people are reading my story, it gives them hope, it gives them courage to give voice to that dream they once had. It’s so difficult to be an actor in this business, and I want those people who are doubting themselves or have dreams fading away because they think it’s not going to happen …”Quan grew too emotional to finish his thought and swallowed, collecting himself. “Anyway,” he said.Recent awards-season events for the film have often ended in tears, according to Scheinert: “In a weird way, we’re finally getting to debrief with our cast and crew about what this really meant to us.” It all began with a viral GQ video when Yeoh cried as she discussed reading the “Everything Everywhere” script, which asked her to play so many more modes than she was used to. “To be funny, to be real, to be sad — finally, somebody understood that I could do those things,” she said in the clip.That touched her directors and also took them by surprise, since on set Yeoh was more likely to affectionately razz them than to confess her innermost feelings. “Some of the stuff she said in interviews, she had never said to us,” Kwan said. “Michelle’s a very guarded woman, and she has to be.”The costume designer Shirley Kurata was among the crew members at the screening.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesOne academy voter paid tribute to the film’s hot dog fingers.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesRight on cue, Yeoh finally arrived, a vision in yellow Gucci. “I’m the canary, nice to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand. The very busy actress, who will soon be seen in “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the Disney+ series “American Born Chinese,” had hotfooted it to the party from the nearby premiere of “The School for Good and Evil,” a Netflix fantasy film where she plays one of the teachers at an enchanted boarding school. That red carpet had been packed with ingénues and TikTok stars, and Yeoh was surprised when a young girl recognized her and passed her an appreciative note.“I thought, ‘I’m out of my league here, nobody’s going to know who you are,’” Yeoh said.“Michelle, you are huge,” Kwan replied. He recalled a San Francisco screening of “Everything Everywhere” where the heavily Asian crowd, which had revered Yeoh since her start in Hong Kong action movies, cheered so loudly that the actress was afraid to go onstage, lest she become too emotional in public.“For a long time, they would say, ‘You have to tell everybody about your experiences,’ and I couldn’t, because it would overwhelm me,” Yeoh said, turning to Kwan and Scheinert. “And the one time I listened to you — the one time — I did an interview and I was blubbering! Oh, I was so embarrassed.”Was she referring to that GQ clip? “Yes,” said a mortified Yeoh, burying her face in Kwan’s shoulder. “See, everyone knows!”Yeoh told me the reason she has trouble articulating what “Everything Everywhere” means to her “is because when you really talk about it, suddenly it comes crashing in that you have waited for so many years for something like this. And as the years go by, you see it slipping away from your fingers, and you can’t get it back because you are aging. But even though I’m 60, I can still do a lot! Don’t put me in a box.”Yeoh seen through a chandelier at the theater. She said she had a hard time talking about the film’s success because each time she is reminded that she “waited for so many years for something like this.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesRecent supporting roles in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Crazy Rich Asians” were meaningful, Yeoh said, but on “Everything Everywhere,” being listed first on the call sheet gave her a sense of ownership she’d never really felt before. She hopes that Hollywood will continue to consider her for lead roles, though she’s well-aware of whom those parts are traditionally written for.“I read scripts and it’s the guy who goes off on some big adventure — and he’s going off with my daughter!” she said. “I’m like, no, no.”Yeoh excused herself to greet Roger Spottiswoode, who directed “Tomorrow Never Dies,” the 1997 James Bond film that help introduced her to American audiences; meanwhile, the “Star Trek Into Darkness” screenwriter Roberto Orci greeted Quan with a deferential bow. Later, as the cast and directors gathered in a theater to introduce the film — alongside a huge cohort that included its fight choreographers, composers, visual effects artists and costumers — a man from the audience yelled, “You rock!”This sort of unalloyed success is a new sensation for Kwan and Scheinert, who recently signed a lucrative five-year pact with Universal but got their start making odder fare like face-melting music videos and a debut feature, “Swiss Army Man” (2016), that involved Paul Dano riding a dead Daniel Radcliffe like a jet ski powered by flatulence. How does it feel when their avowedly left-of-center sensibility happens to score a cultural bull’s-eye?“It’s unsettling,” Scheinert said.“It makes us feel like we messed up somewhere,” Kwan joked. “The whole world likes it? What did we do wrong?” More

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      in Movies

      Quintessa Swindell, a Trans and Nonbinary Star of DC’s ‘Black Adam’

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      “My trans and nonbinary identity is the thing that I’m the most confident about in my life,” Mx. Swindell said.Name: Quintessa SwindellAge: 25Hometown: Virginia Beach, Va.Now Lives: In a loft in Downtown Los Angeles and a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village of Manhattan.Claim to Fame: Quintessa Swindell is a nonbinary trans actor who stars in DC’s “Black Adam,” a big-budget film in which Mx. Swindell plays Cyclone, a superhero who has the power to manipulate the wind. The film, which opens on Oct. 21 and also stars Dwayne Johnson, marks one of the first times that a transgender actor has been cast in a main role in a DC production. “My trans and nonbinary identity is the thing that I’m the most confident about in my life,” Mx. Swindell said. “Having that understanding and comfort has enabled me to progress through my life with way more ease than I ever had in the past.”Big Break: Raised by a single father in Virginia Beach, Mx. Swindell took theater classes at the Governor’s School for the Arts during high school as an outlet for personal growth. “Acting became therapy sessions because I was forced to translate bottled-up feelings into whatever scenes I was studying,” Mx. Swindell said.In 2015, Mx. Swindell moved to New York City to study theater at Marymount Manhattan, before dropping out two years later to pursue acting in Los Angeles. A former acting coach put Mx. Swindell in touch with Robert Myerow, a talent agent at the Gersh Agency, which led to roles in the 2018 film “Granada Nights” and, later, as a high school senior grappling with family issues on HBO’s “In Treatment.” “I’m always super-focused on how every performance or piece of work can be better than the last,” Mx. Swindell said.Mx. Swindell plays Cyclone in “Black Adam,” who has the power to manipulate the wind.Frank Masi/Warner Bros.Latest Project: Balancing comic-book blockbusters with independent films, Mx. Swindell also stars in “Master Gardener,” a philosophical thriller with Sigourney Weaver that premiered last month at the Venice Film Festival. (The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis called the film “an austere, beautiful, romantic, wordy, implausible and touchingly Utopian story of love, loneliness, violence and redemption.”) “When I met Sigourney, the first thing I thought was, ‘How am I possibly going to thank her for everything she has done?’” Mx. Swindell said.Mx. Swindell also stars in “Master Gardener,” a thriller with Sigourney Weaver that premiered at the Venice Film Festival.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesNext Thing: Mx. Swindell is in the early stages of producing two films that “say something about the world we live in today.” One is “a movie about female dispatch riders during World War II.” The other is “about two female D.J. pioneers in London’s ‘second summer of love.’”Gender Performances: Mx. Swindell found New York City to be a wellspring for identity studies — not only in college classrooms, but at after-hours parties like Battle Hymn, where gender fluidity was flaunted and celebrated. “I was learning things in my gender-studies classes, and at the same time I was going out at night and seeing the very things I was learning about in the wild.” More

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      in Theater

      Lars Eidinger Might Be the Greatest German Actor You’ve Never Heard Of

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      He might be the greatest Shakespearean actor you’ve never heard of. At last, New Yorkers will get to see his no-holds-barred portrayal of Hamlet in Thomas Ostermeier’s production at BAM.The German actor Lars Eidinger could not have been more easygoing at the photo shoot for this article. After arriving sans entourage in front of the Plaza Hotel, he clambered up a couple of stacked N.Y.P.D. concrete barriers, precariously posing like a gigantic besuited stork. As the photographer eyed a gurgling fountain nearby, Eidinger casually asked: “I go in?”It was a chilly, drizzly October afternoon in New York, but he took off his socks and shoes, pulled up his pants and waded into the water. Afterward, he stripped down to his underwear and changed into the sweats he’d brought along (just in case), unfazed by gusts of wind and gawkers on the street.That go-with-the-flow spontaneity won’t come as a surprise to anybody who’s seen Eidinger onstage. His Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017, for example, was a chaotic-evil rock ’n’ roll goblin, the performance simultaneously illuminating and unhinged. This monarch was “a bogeyman guaranteed to haunt your nightmares for weeks to come,” Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times review of Thomas Ostermeier’s production for the Berlin Schaubühne theater company.Now New York theatergoers will be able to take in another Eidinger tour de force when he and Ostermeier bring their “Hamlet,” also from the Schaubühne, to BAM on Oct. 27. (The short run concludes Nov. 5.) By the end of the gripping, delirious show — which includes a hip-hop interlude, cross-dressing and Eidinger stuffing dirt into his mouth — you might be tempted to call an exorcist on this prince of Denmark.Thomas Ostermeier’s production for the Berlin Schaubühne company debuted in 2008, and finally arrives in New York with its star ready to wear the upside-down crown.Arno DeclairYet the actor does not set out to get a rise out of audience members. Rather, he uses a good old technique to draw them into the world of the play by creating a highly physical, no-holds-barred performance.“This has much to do with my love for Bertolt Brecht,” the jovial 46-year-old actor said in between sips of a latte outside a Midtown cafe. “Brecht said, ‘Zeigt, dass Ihr zeigt’ — ‘Show that you are showing.’ I’m all the time showing that I’m an actor onstage in a play. It’s the opposite of the understanding of a Method actor: I never become somebody else.“The only thing I try to achieve is to become myself,” he continued. “Maybe I’m more myself when I’m onstage as Hamlet than I am right now talking to you.”Eidinger has toured the world with the Schaubühne, and his charisma and all-in approach have earned him far-flung fans. This may help to explain why in recent years he has become a familiar presence on international screens — chances are you’ve seen that really tall guy with the wide jaw line and narrowly set blue eyes without knowing who he was. He has played his share of extremists, including an industrialist plotting against the Weimar Republic in the Netflix series “Babylon Berlin” and an ice-cold Nazi officer in the BBC alt-historical show “SS-GB.” He has also effectively mined restraint in naturalistic dramas, most notably as a newly separated dad visiting his parents in the German film “Home for the Weekend,” and as an actor dying of cancer in the affecting Swiss film “My Little Sister.” (In that film, his character portrays “Hamlet” in a staging by a director played by … Ostermeier.)“Somehow he’s like the Who breaking their guitars onstage,” the writer-director Olivier Assayas said of the actor who starred in the HBO series “Irma Vep.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesTellingly, our conversation took place while Eidinger was in town for the New York Film Festival, where he helped introduce Noah Baumbach’s latest feature, “White Noise,” in which he stars alongside Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver. The in-demand actor then had to leave our interview in a mad rush because he was running late for a meeting with the director Shawn Levy, for whom he has been starring in a series adaptation of the Anthony Doerr best seller “All the Light We Cannot See.”One of Eidinger’s recent (and most memorable) screen turns was in the HBO series “Irma Vep,” in which he portrayed Gottfried, a flamboyant, crack-addicted German star who loves pushing people’s buttons. “I liked the idea that Lars carries the torch of the madness of 1970s German cinema,” the writer-director Olivier Assayas said this summer in a video chat about his show. “Somehow he’s like the Who breaking their guitars onstage. It’s stuff I grew up on and I think that’s something that’s missing in contemporary cinema.”It’s missing on contemporary stages, too, giving Eidinger’s self-aware hyper-theatrical performances a unique power. But if they resonate with theatergoers past the initial shock to the system, it’s because he never loses sight of his characters.EIDINGER GREW UP in Berlin, where he still lives with his wife and daughter, and studied theater there. He became a salaried member of the Schaubühne ensemble in 1999, though he admits that it took him a while to find his bearings as a professional actor. A production of “Troilus and Cressida” with the British director James Macdonald, in 2005, proved to be a turning point. “I was really lost as Troilus, and I asked James, ‘Can you please help me understand his situation?,’” Eidinger recalled. “He said, ‘Lars, just the words. Just the words.’”Eidinger with Alicia Vikander in “Irma Vep.” He portrayed Gottfried, a flamboyant, crack-addicted German star who loves pushing people’s buttons.Carole Bethuel/HBOEidinger confessed that at the time he didn’t quite get what Macdonald meant. It hit him a few years later, when he started to rehearse “Hamlet,” which premiered in 2008 and has been touring on and off ever since.“Suddenly I thought, “OK, he was absolutely right — it’s just about the words,’” Eidinger said. “Just try it at home: Say the line ‘To be or not to be’ and try to understand what it means for you. I guarantee that there will be an emotion coming up. I don’t have to go onstage with any kind of preparation for the way I go into a mood or to a certain kind of emotion. I go onstage and try to be as open and blank as possible, and then it’s just about the words.” (Eidinger is so attached to “Hamlet” that a forthcoming documentary about him is titled “To Be or Not to Be.”)While it takes some preparation to achieve that state of readiness, Eidinger claims that he doesn’t start from high concepts. “There’s a very nice quote from Helene Weigel: ‘If you have an idea, forget it,’” Eidinger said, quoting Brecht’s wife and the director of the renowned Berliner Ensemble. “I believe in the genius of creation out of the moment. You invent something out of an impulse because you are open-minded, but you are not aware how meaningful it is. For example, in ‘Hamlet’ I wear the crown upside down,” he continued. “We tried several crowns and then we had one that was a bit too big for my head and always fell off. So I put it on the other way around, and then it worked.”It probably helps that he and Ostermeier seem to have a complicated relationship that involves trust but also a degree of one-upmanship. Speaking about their rehearsals in a video conversation, the director said: “We were constantly competing on who has the more crazy idea, who is more funny, who is more inventive, who is more creative. Because we know each other so well, it’s often, ‘OK, but I know even better, it can be even more crazy.’”“I’m aware of everything,” Eidinger said of his acting onstage. “I see the person in the first row taking candy out of his pocket and eating it. It doesn’t distract me: It makes it more complex.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAnd this does not stop once a show reaches the stage. Jenny König, who plays Gertrude and Ophelia in “Hamlet” and Lady Anne in “Richard III,” knows all too well that acting with Eidinger requires being constantly on alert. “I think he’s really good at creating an illusion that it’s happening the first time right now — he can’t just play the scenes like he did it a hundred times before,” she said in a video chat. “It’s always this special moment where something else could happen. Sometimes it doesn’t work, that’s the risk, but the aim is to be in the moment and to experience real reactions.”Onstage, Eidinger is in a heightened state of consciousness that allows him to experience a hyper-awareness of his environment. That, in turn, helps him modulate and adjust his performance on the spot. “Some actors describe acting like being a tunnel, but it’s the complete opposite for me: I’m aware of everything,” he said. “I’m standing onstage, maybe I’m emotional and crying real tears, but at the same time I see the person in the first row taking candy out of his pocket and eating it. I can think about bringing my daughter to school. It doesn’t distract me: It makes it more complex.”This openness to his surroundings is also expressed into an interest in exploring other mediums. Eidinger, who mentions music as a primary inspiration, released a trip-hoppy album, “I’ll Break Ya Legg,” in 1998; quotes the rapper Tyler, the Creator as freely as Brecht; and has been deejaying for decades, including regular gigs at the Schaubühne. (“I’d say his taste of music is much too commercial,” Ostermeier sniffed. Someone needs to write a play à clef about these two.) He also loves taking photographs and has directed a few shows — this fall he is reprising the adaptation of “Peer Gynt” that he hatched with the artist John Bock and starred in.“For me, there’s not a big difference in how I express myself, so I’m completely satisfied just doing photography, I’m completely satisfied just directing or doing music,” Eidinger said. “Acting is something I stick to because maybe I’m most talented. In all the other art forms, I feel limitations; when I act, I feel no limits. And that’s very attractive, of course.” More

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      Jeff Weiss, an Unconventional Theatrical Force, Dies at 82

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      Downtown, he was known for sprawling works and vivid performances, but later in his career he drew praise as an actor in mainstream productions, too.Jeff Weiss, a playwright and actor known for innovative, offbeat shows in out-of-the-way New York theaters as well as for roles in mainstream productions, including more than a dozen on Broadway, died on Sept. 18 in Macungie, Pa., near Allentown. He was 82.His brother, Steve, said the cause was metastasized prostate cancer.Mr. Weiss was an important figure in the experimental theater scene in New York, beginning in the 1960s. His plays were seen at Caffe Cino in the West Village, La MaMa on the Lower East Side and other Manhattan spots known for the provocative and the outlandish. Those include his own Good Medicine and Company, a Lower East Side storefront theater that he ran with his partner in theater and in life, Carlos Ricardo Martinez. His plays were also sometimes staged in Allentown, where he grew up.The works he wrote were impossible to classify and did not lend themselves to conventional plot description. In “F.O.B.” (1972), Mr. Weiss spent much of his onstage time immersed in a bathtub full of cold water. “Hot Keys” (1992), Mr. Weiss’s response to the AIDS crisis, was a late-night serial about a serial killer.Some of his performances lasted four hours, five hours, even eight hours. His best-known and most ambitious work could be said to have lasted decades. It was called “… And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid.” Part I was first staged in 1966. Part IV appeared in 1984.In some of his works, including “… And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, Part III,” Mr. Weiss played all the characters — and there could be a lot. In others, he made roles for other actors and could place extraordinary demands on them. “… And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid, Part IV,” for instance, consisted of dozens of scenes, with more added as the run went along, and they could be presented in any order.“Jeff would post the order for a particular evening an hour before the show,” Nicky Paraiso, an actor and musician who worked with him for decades, said by phone.The actress Kate Valk was part of the grueling adventure that was “Part IV,” which was subtitled “The Confessions of Conrad Gehrhardt,” with Mr. Weiss playing the title character.“Was Conrad a maniac?,” Ms. Valk said by email. “Or an actor who played a maniac? That was the edge Jeff walked in his work. It always felt a little dangerous.”“To perform onstage with him,” she added, “was to be right there inside his glorious mania, virile and vibrant.”A 1966 poster for “…And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid,” Mr. Weiss’s best-known and most ambitious work.La Mama ArchivesMr. Weiss performing in “…And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid” at La MaMa on the Lower East Side in 1966.La MaMa ArchivesThe goings-on could be tough sledding for anyone expecting a conventional play. In 1982, when Charles Richter, then the chairman of the theater department at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, brought to the school a Weiss play called “Last Gasps,” he was blunt in describing its appeal to The Morning Call, the Allentown newspaper.“I wouldn’t consider the play avant-garde,” he said. “I think it defies categorization. It’s part vaudeville, part intellectual, part blatant sensationalism. I think a large part of the audience won’t get it.”Yet enough people got Mr. Weiss that he developed a following, one that stretched beyond the experimental theater world. Part IV of his “Rent” opus drew a favorable notice from Mel Gussow in The New York Times during a production with members of the Wooster Group in SoHo in the summer of 1984.“As the play entered its fourth hour in the un-air-conditioned Performing Garage,” Mr. Gussow wrote, “one had long ago accepted discomfort as a way of Weiss life. Though the evening had its excesses, it also had a visceral investiture of theatrical imagination.”One whose attention Mr. Weiss caught was the actor Kevin Kline, who became a fan and friend and in 1986 was preparing to play Hamlet for Joseph Papp’s Public Theater.“During the casting process I was trying to think what actor could play the Player King,” Mr. Kline said by email, “one who could both inspire and confound Hamlet, someone as humane as he was unabashedly histrionic. To me Jeff was the man.”He left a note at Mr. Weiss’s theater asking if he’d consider auditioning, though that prospect seemed unlikely; some years earlier, Mr. Weiss had been cast in a Public show but had withdrawn, unable to handle the demands of conventional theater.“To my surprise, he responded favorably,” Mr. Kline said. “He came in and auditioned for the director, Liviu Ciulei, who was so knocked out that he asked him to play not only the Player King but also the ghost of Hamlet’s father, as well as Osric. He couldn’t get enough of him.”Mr. Weiss acknowledged that casting him was a risk.“They took bets at the theater on whether I would show up for rehearsal, and how long I would last,” he told The Times in 1986. “I do have a reputation for fleeing in the face of possible success.”Succeed he did.“Next to Mr. Kline, the most intriguing acting comes from Jeff Weiss, an idiosyncratic actor and playwright in the experimental theater,” Mr. Gussow wrote in his review. Mr. Weiss, he wrote, “reveals a hitherto concealed talent for the classics.”That performance started a run of more conventional acting jobs for Mr. Weiss. Those included Broadway appearances in “Macbeth” in 1988 with Glenda Jackson and Christopher Plummer, an “Our Town” revival later that year, “Present Laughter” in 1996, “The Invention of Love” in 2001 and “Henry IV” in 2003, with a cast that included Mr. Kline.Mr. Weiss worked in high-profile Off Broadway productions as well, including as a drag queen in “Flesh and Blood,” Peter Gaitens’s stage adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel, at New York Theater Workshop in 2003. “Mr. Weiss is terrific,” Ben Brantley wrote in The Times, “trilling the expected, crowd-pleasing notes while providing a darker, more intricate bass line.”Mr. Weiss found himself in demand elsewhere. He turned up as a judge in multiple episodes of the television series “Law & Order.” In 1990, at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., he took on the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in the seasonal production of “A Christmas Carol,” to much acclaim. Francis X. Kuhn directed that production.“A professional actor with no headshot, Jeff was described to me as a downtown theater ‘outlaw,’” Mr. Kuhn said by email. “But he proved to be a generous and exhilarating collaborator.”“He was deeply and absolutely committed to exploring and sharing Scrooge’s spiritual journey,” Mr. Kuhn added. “That’s what he cared about, and what he made the audience care about.”Mr. Weiss and Cherry Jones in an Off Broadway production of “Flesh and Blood” in 2003. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJeffrey George Weiss was born on April 30, 1940, in Reading, Pa., and grew up in Allentown. His father, Benjamin, was an executive at a cement company, and his mother, Helen (Eagle) Weiss, was a homemaker.Mr. Weiss wrote his first plays before he was a teenager. Formal education, though, was not for him.“I was kicked out of school pretty regularly, because I was a cutup and kind of neurotic,” he told The Times in 1986, “so I left when I was 16.”Soon he was in New York and had met Mr. Martinez. Their Good Medicine and Company theater had 10 seats and, in the early years, no electricity.“People would learn to bring flashlights to a Jeff Weiss show,” using them to help illuminate the stage, said Mr. Paraiso, Mr. Weiss’s longtime collaborator.Ticket revenue was put to quick use — to buy the makings of dinner, to be served to the playgoers.“While I was performing,” Mr. Weiss told The Pittsburgh Press in 1988, “Carlos was upstairs cooking, so when the show was over, the food would be ready.”Mr. Weiss moved back to Allentown in 1997, though he continued to appear in New York productions. His brother said that Mr. Weiss had wanted to be near their aging mother. Mr. Martinez joined him, and when Mr. Martinez developed Parkinson’s disease, Mr. Weiss cared for him, Mr. Paraiso said.Mr. Martinez died in 2017. Mr. Weiss’s brother is his only survivor.Mr. Kline recalled a vibrant personality offstage as well as on.“Jeff loved to laugh,” he said. “Being with him, just like watching his plays, could make you giddy. There was no one like him.” More

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      in Theater

      Patti LuPone Says She Resigned From Stage Actors’ Union

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      The actress left months ago, and revealed her exit on Monday after her name arose during discussion of the errant reprimanding of a “Hadestown” patron who was using a captioning device.The much-honored stage actress Patti LuPone said on Monday that she resigned from the labor union Actors’ Equity months ago, revealing the news after her history of reprimanding cellphone-using audience members was invoked in a new controversy about the policing of electronic devices.The drama that consumed the corner of social media obsessed with theater began to unfold last week when a “Hadestown” audience member with hearing loss said she had been reprimanded by one of that show’s current stars, Lillias White, while using a theater-approved captioning device mistaken for a cellphone.“On a daily basis, actors are confronted with digital devices illegally capturing their work,” the musical’s producers said in a statement on Monday. “In this case, following a terrible miscommunication, in the middle of a live performance, Lillias mistook the closed-captioning device for a cellphone.”The “Hadestown” incident, for which the show apologized, prompted significant criticism of White. Then, on social media, LuPone’s name was cited in the discussion because she had in the past been celebrated for seizing a cellphone from a texting theater patron.Some of the criticism directed toward White was ugly. “The discourse on social media around the incident has devolved into racist, ageist and other abhorrently discriminatory language we unequivocally condemn,” the production said.The tenor of the criticism of White, who is African American, prompted some on social media to recall that LuPone, who is white, has been lauded on occasions when she has chastised misbehaving theatergoers.Because the patron White reprimanded was using a device for legitimate purposes, it is an imperfect comparison. But LuPone turned to Twitter on Monday in an apparent effort to distance herself from the situation, writing: “Quite a week on Broadway, seeing my name being bandied about. Gave up my Equity card; no longer part of that circus. Figure it out.”LuPone left the union over the summer, long before the “Hadestown” incident, upon finishing her Tony-winning run in a revival of “Company.”“When the run of ‘Company’ ended this past July, I knew I wouldn’t be onstage for a very long time,” LuPone said in a statement emailed in response to a question about her tweet. “And at that point I made the decision to resign from Equity.”Her departure came after a change in union rules that eliminated a cap on dues collected from high-earning performers. She had expressed concern about the change and the way it was communicated, according to people familiar with the thought process behind her resignation.Her spokesman, Philip Rinaldi, when asked about the issue, said only: “It was a number of issues that led to her decision. Patti was an Equity member for 50 years.”It is not clear what the statement means about her professional future. But this is not the first time LuPone, 73, who also won Tonys for her work in “Evita” and a revival of “Gypsy,” has said she was going to step back. In 2017 she said she expected “War Paint” to be her final musical; a year later she was back onstage in “Company” in London.In some instances, it is possible for performers who are not members of Equity to perform on Broadway. It is also possible to rejoin a union.The “Hadestown” controversy has also renewed discussion about monitoring audience behavior. The playwright Jeremy O. Harris urged reconsideration of such policies, saying, “Having a more realistic relationship to technology as well as more generous read of the actions of others would stop things like this from happening.” More

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      in Television

      ‘House of the Dragon’ Star Fabien Frankel on Playing Kingmaker

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      The man who placed the crown on the new King of Westeros’s head is still not quite sure how he got there.This interview includes spoilers for the first nine episodes of “House of the Dragon.”To this day, Fabien Frankel doesn’t really know how he wound up on “House of the Dragon.”“I got an email from my agent that said ‘Untitled HBO Television Series,’” he said. He was asked to audition for a character named “Clint.”Wearing all black, the startlingly photogenic English actor, who plays the lethal Kingsguard knight Ser Criston Cole, settled back into a couch at HBO’s New York headquarters last week to continue the story. “I did the audition, and heard nothing back other than that they were looking for a slightly more Jason Momoa type for the part. That certainly wasn’t me, and I really didn’t think about it again.”Six months later, by which point the word was out that a “Game of Thrones” prequel was in the works, he was offered the part. “What I still don’t know, and I’m fascinated to know, is whether they couldn’t find their Jason Momoa type, or if they decided to change their casting brief. If the opportunity arises to ask them, I will.”Judging from how things have been going in Westeros, Frankel has time to spare. In the show’s most recent episode, his Ser Criston struck the first blow in the internecine conflict for control of Westeros — known as the Dance of the Dragons in George R.R. Martin’s source novel, “Fire & Blood” — and placed the crown on the head of the new king, the creepy Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney). In the book, this earns Cole the sobriquet of “Kingmaker.” To hear Frankel tell it, though, the acclaim has not yet hit home.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“House of the Dragon” is an enormous hit. How has your life changed?My life in London is more or less the same. I’m probably getting slightly more calls from my agents, and a weekly call from my brother and friends to talk about the episodes. But my day-to-day life is not very different at all.London’s a good city at keeping you grounded because people tend to be quite private and un-invasive. You hear all these stories of, “I couldn’t walk down the street,” but I don’t have any of that. I can count on two hands the amount of times people on the street have taken notice.I’m a bit surprised to hear that. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but you’ve become kind of a sex symbol among the fandom.I haven’t. I mean, I suppose it was inevitable for whoever was going to have a romance with Rhaenyra [the princess who seduces Cole, played by Milly Alcock and, later, Emma D’Arcy], but I can tell you now that no one in my close circle is swooning.Cole with Milly Alcock, as the younger version of Rhaenyra. The character shaped Cristen Cole’s trajectory in the show.Ollie Upton/HBOLet’s talk about Ser Criston’s journey from one side of the conflict to the other. When he first becomes romantically involved with Rhaenyra, he seems a little idealistic, a little naïve.I never felt that he was naïve. I felt that he was taken out of a life he understood into a life he didn’t.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series is here.Playing Kingmaker: Fabien Frankel plays Ser Criston Cole, who got to place the crown on the new King of Westeros’s head. He is still not sure how he landed the role.The Princess and the Queen: Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, who portray the grown-up versions of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, talked about the forces that drive their characters apart — and pull them together.A Man’s Decline: By the eighth episode of the season, Viserys no longer looks like a proud Targaryen king. The actor Paddy Considine discussed the character’s transformation and its meaning.A Rogue Prince: Daemon Targaryen is an agent of chaos. But “he’s got a strange moral compass of his own,” Matt Smith, who portrays him, said.He’s a soldier. In the army, you don’t just become a sergeant or a captain; you work to become a sergeant or a captain. In King’s Landing, it’s hereditary names, titles, people who haven’t earned the right to be anywhere. You take this character, who has nothing in common with that entire world, and put him in the central circle. It takes him a beat to figure things out.Then, obviously, there is a darkness within him that a certain moment triggers, and he becomes what he is.Why does he react so fanatically when Rhaenyra rejects his marriage proposal and counters with a sort of indecent proposal of her own?There’s nothing extraordinary about it: He’s asked a girl to run away with him, and he’s been told no. That’s the basis. It doesn’t matter who she is — they’re two kids, and they’re young, and he has very strong feelings for her. And she said, “No, but I’ll keep you on the side, do what I need to do,” which is disrespectful unto itself.My justification, and this is probably somewhat controversial, was that Rhaenyra could have let him go at the end of that conversation, or at some point before her wedding. Instead, she made him sit through the whole thing. And he flips. It becomes very evident that he has a temper that we had not yet seen. That temper, for reasons he feels are profound, makes him flip.Frankel didn’t know what he was auditioning for when he first read for “House of the Dragon.” Peter Fisher for The New York TimesI like how you put it earlier, that there’s a darkness within him. It’s much closer to the surface now than it used to be.Yes. The sourness and bitterness of this world has washed off on him. You are your surroundings; you are the people you’re surrounded by. Ser Criston happens to be surrounded by an incredibly ambitious group of very Machiavellian human beings whose sole ambition is power. Eventually, you go: “Well, that’s the life I live. That’s what I am now. I’m in too deep.”And you become the Kingmaker. You draw first blood in the conflict between the so-called “Greens” and “Blacks,” bashing in the head of poor Lord Beesbury (Bill Paterson). Was that an accident, or did Cole kill him on purpose?I don’t want to say. If it comes from me, then it’s decided, and I’d rather “House of the Dragon” fans, who are so astute, watch it and decide for themselves.Then he puts the crown on King Aegon II’s head in full view of the public. He’s famous now. Is that a role he embraces?I think he sees it as his duty, by proxy of being Alicent’s sworn protector, to protect these boys. He’s been very close to a father figure to them. Criston Cole taught these kids to fight, taught these kids respect. There’s that bit where Aemond [Aegon’s younger brother, played by Ewan Mitchell] is talking, and Criston didn’t like how he was speaking, and he says something like — I don’t remember ——“Every woman is an image of the Mother, to be spoken of with reverence.”Yes. So I think that’s his duty now. He doesn’t want to be a big star or very famous. It’s not in his nature. That’s just what happened.That’s a very funny line given what we’ve seen and heard from Criston.I’m glad you found it funny because I remember thinking it was hilarious. There was a conversation between Sara [Hess, the episode’s writer]; Clare [Kilner], our director; and myself when we were in Spain shooting that scene about how it should be delivered. I said it can only be funny. I mean, he’s not exactly proved that every woman is an image of the Mother.Frankel said his life hasn’t changed much since “House of the Dragon” began airing. “My day-to-day life is not very different at all,” he said.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesThat sequence really built up the relationship between Criston and Aegon’s kid brother, Aemond One-Eye. There’s a mutual respect there, even among such shifty characters.Criston sees Aemond in himself, and himself in Aemond. Ewan and I talked a lot about that. He and I would spend a lot of time together, walking around Spain together, discussing this relationship. There’s a real closeness between them.They’re also the two coolest characters on the Green side, to be honest.Oh, mate, I’m loving you saying that. I’m very Team Green, and proud of it. That’s kind of how I’m programmed to think now. I’m glad to hear there’s some love for the Greens out there. I think we are a force to be reckoned with. It’s a good solid crew. I’d back us in a street fight.Perhaps it’s too late at this point to ask, but does some part of Ser Criston still love Rhaenyra?[Smiles ruefully.] First love is first love. I think everyone will always love the person that they fell in love with for the first time. From the first time you hear a beautiful piece of music, you’ll always love it, even if you’ve heard it a hundred times, because you remember that first time you heard it. So yeah, he will always love Rhaenyra. More

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      in Movies

      Robbie Coltrane, the Beloved Hagrid in ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 72

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      The veteran Scottish actor and comedian also played a gambling-addicted psychologist in the 1990s crime series “Cracker.”Robbie Coltrane, the veteran Scottish actor who played the beloved half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” films and starred in the cult British crime series “Cracker,” died on Friday in Larbert, Scotland. He was 72.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Belinda Wright, his British agent. Ms. Wright said that Mr. Coltrane’s family had not disclosed a cause, but that he had been “unwell for some time.”Mr. Coltrane veered from the comic to the gritty in a 40-year career in film and television, with turns as an antihero detective in “Cracker” (1993-96), a K.G.B. agent turned ally to James Bond and a gangster who disguises himself as a nun after betraying his fellow criminals in “Nuns on the Run” (1990).But those roles did little to prepare Mr. Coltrane to play Hagrid, a fan favorite from the “Harry Potter” books whose transition to the big screen would face the sky-high expectations of millions of young readers.Mr. Coltrane successfully embodied the 8-foot-6 half-giant. He appeared in all eight “Harry Potter” films, infusing the franchise with warmth even as he towered over the young witches and wizards at the center of the series who were embroiled in a fight against evil.The first film, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” opened in November 2001 and went on to gross more than $1 billion worldwide, building on the already fervent global fan base of J.K. Rowling’s book series.Ms. Wright, Mr. Coltrane’s agent of 40 years, said the role was the reason he received a “stream of fan letters every week for over 20 years.”Fiercely protective of his privacy, Mr. Coltrane gave few interviews and could be hard-edged with reporters. But he said he had to cast that gruffness aside when he was embraced by a legion of young “Harry Potter” fans.“Kids come up to you and they go, ‘Would you like to sign my book?’ with those big doe-eyes,” he told The Guardian in 2012. “And it’s a serious responsibility.”Mr. Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan on March 30, 1950, in Rutherglen, Scotland, outside Glasgow. His father, Ian Baxter McMillan, was a doctor; his mother, Jean Ross Howie, was a teacher.He grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow and enrolled in Glasgow School of Art, where he studied drawing and painting but struggled to capture his ideas on canvas.“I wanted to paint like the painters who really moved me, who made me want to weep about humanity,” he told The Herald, a Scottish newspaper, in 2014. “Titian. Rembrandt. But I looked at my diploma show and felt a terrible disappointment when I realized all the things that were in my head were not on the canvas.”As the prospect of a future as a painter dimmed, he was encouraged by a drama teacher who told him that he had acting talent after he appeared in a staging of Harold Pinter’s one-act play “The Dumb Waiter,” The Herald reported.After adopting his stage name as a tribute to the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, Mr. Coltrane found steadier footing when he moved to London. He worked as a stand-up comedian and actor, picking up theater roles and small parts in television and film productions.He attracted critical acclaim as Dr. Edward Fitzgerald, known as Fitz, the chain-smoking criminal psychologist in the hit series “Cracker,” whose alcohol addiction echoed Mr. Coltrane’s own issues with drinking. The role earned him the BAFTA award for best TV actor in 1994, 1995 and 1996.A turn as Valentin Zukovsky, a former K.G.B. agent turned Russian mafia kingpin, in the James Bond films “GoldenEye” (1995) and “The World is Not Enough” (1999) exposed Mr. Coltrane to a broader audience, particularly in the United States.There was nothing, however, that could compete with the global fame he found after he was cast as Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” series. With his bushy beard and growling voice, Mr. Coltrane brought the beloved character to life. Mr. Coltrane, center, as Rubeus Hagrid in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009), with Jim Broadbent, left, as Professor Horace Slughorn, and Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter.Alex Bailey/Warner Brothers PicturesThe young actors who grew up on the sets of the “Harry Potter” films fondly remembered Mr. Coltrane as someone they could count on to lift their spirits with a joke or a word of encouragement.Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, said on Friday that Mr. Coltrane “used to keep us laughing constantly as kids.”“I’ve especially fond memories of him keeping our spirits up on ‘Prisoner of Azkaban,’” Mr. Radcliffe said in a statement, “when we were all hiding from the torrential rain for hours in Hagrid’s hut and he was telling stories and cracking jokes to keep morale up.” James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the series, wrote on Twitter that when he was 14 years old and nervous on his first day on the set, Mr. Coltrane came over and said, “Enjoy it, you’ll be great.”Mr. Coltrane is survived by his children, Spencer and Alice, and a sister, Annie Rae. In the HBO Max retrospective “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” which premiered on Jan. 1, Mr. Coltrane reflected on the role that introduced him to a new generation of fans.“The legacy of the movies is that my children’s generation will show them to their children,” he said. “So you could be watching it in 50 years’ time, easy. I’ll not be here, sadly, but Hagrid will, yes.” More