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    “Harry Potter” Stuntman Tells His Story in a New Documentary

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    In a new documentary, David Holmes, a stunt performer in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, recalls his life before and after a harrowing accident on set that left him paralyzed.When David Holmes arrived at rehearsal to perfect a fight scene for the penultimate “Harry Potter” film, he was strapped into a harness that was supposed to send him flying backward.But Holmes was jerked back too fast, hitting a wall and breaking his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.His career as a stunt performer was over, at age 25. He had portrayed Daniel Radcliffe’s title character and others, including Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom, since the franchise’s first installment.After years behind the scenes, Holmes will now tell his story in a new documentary, “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived,” which is streaming on Max and will air on HBO on Wednesday at 9 p.m. and on Sky Documentaries and NOW in Britain on Saturday.Holmes is teaming up again with Radcliffe, the executive producer on the project, which captures his life before and after his injury. Radcliffe and Holmes said they hoped to call attention to stunt performers, who often put their lives at risk with little recognition.“It’s nice to know my legacy in film is not just me hitting that wall,” Holmes said in an interview.Holmes hasn’t fully embraced the limelight, Radcliffe said, and “just wants to shine it onto other people.”Radcliffe and Holmes had known they wanted to work on a project together for a while, they said. Initially, though, Holmes didn’t want to be the focus.“You put on a costume, and you take on a character the same way an actor does. You have that safety net to live behind that character,” Holmes said. “It’s very different now because it’s me.”Radcliffe and Holmes had worked together on a podcast called Cunning Stunts, interviewing stunt performers and coordinators about their work. Radcliffe had also filmed some of the interviews and thought that he’d try his hand at directing a documentary. But he wasn’t quite satisfied with his work.“We started filming some stuff, and then after a while I thought, ‘I don’t think I’m very good at this,’” he said. “We should bring someone else in.”To direct, they landed on Dan Hartley, who had worked as a video assist operator among other roles in the “Harry Potter” films and recently directed “Lad: A Yorkshire Story,” a coming-of-age film about a 13-year-old boy befriending a park ranger after losing his father. The three eventually agreed to shift the focus of the film to Holmes.It wasn’t the plan to use someone from the “Harry Potter” crew, but Hartley seemed like a perfect fit, Radcliffe said.The cast and crew grew close on the film sets, and Radcliffe referred to Holmes as a “cool older brother.”“We wanted someone who has the same kind of connection to Dave that we do,” Radcliffe said. “Not someone from the outside who is going to shape Dave’s story into something else for the sake of making something more sensationalized.”As they started creating the film, they realized it was the first time they had all spoken together about Holmes’s accident.“No one wanted to be the first one to bring it up,” Radcliffe said, “but I definitely think there was something like quite cathartic for everybody on this film who got to talk about it with each other.”Holmes spoke about what life was like after the injury and the people he had met while he was hospitalized, including Will Pike, who was injured in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and was in the bed next to his.Hartley and Radcliffe said that seeing young men being emotional was moving, as was parting from traditional masculine stereotypes that can be prevalent in stunt culture.“What I think is really powerful is seeing these young, sensitive men talking,” Hartley said. “They were just so vulnerable and honest.”Above all, Holmes said he wants his story to bring hope.“We all experienced loss in our life. I learned that at the age of 25,” he said, “and it taught me to be present to appreciate the now.” More

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      How Dumbledore Became Michael Gambon’s Most Recognizable Role

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      The great British stage actor was not initially cast as the wizarding headmaster in the “Harry Potter” films, but he made the role his own.In the latter part of Michael Gambon’s long and storied acting career, some of the most animated analyses of his performances could be found not in theater or film reviews, but in forums for the “Harry Potter” fandom, where dedicated Hogwarts obsessives would dissect his every onscreen utterance as the wizard Albus Dumbledore.It wasn’t originally his role. Richard Harris, the eminent actor who was originally cast, died after filming the second “Harry Potter” movie. Gambon took over in 2003, joining the ranks of great British actors with popular late-career turns as wizards, a lineage that includes Alec Guinness (as the wizard-like Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”) and Ian McKellen (as Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films).Several other well-known actors were initially considered to succeed Harris in the role, including McKellen, who demurred, and Peter O’Toole, who turned it down because of his long, close friendship with Harris.In the end the choice was Gambon, who died Wednesday. He made the role his own, donning the long silver beard and half-moon spectacles and speaking in his unmistakable rich baritone voice, a stark contrast to Harris’s hoarser, more wizened readings as the headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.He was seen by millions, and after a career playing the characters of Brecht and Pinter it was Dumbledore that became his most recognizable — and probably most debated — role.Once Gambon debuted in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” imbuing the character with a darker, sometimes mischievous tone, the question was born: Who was the “better Dumbledore”? Harris, with his soft-spoken, kind hearted air? Or Gambon, with his more sinister twist on the character?Gambon was self-deprecating about the role.“I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat,” Gambon told a British movie blog in 2007. “Every part I play is just a variant of my own personality.”Gambon, who entered the film series in his early 60s, also chose to avoid reading J.K. Rowling’s source material, an approach that he once said was similar to that of Alan Rickman, who played Severus Snape, and Ralph Fiennes, who played Voldemort. He said bluntly that he tended to take movie roles for the money, telling the blog, “I just say what the script tells me to say.”Over the course of six movies, including limited roles in the two-part finale, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” he became beloved by fans and known as something of a prankster on set, once putting a “fart machine” inside Daniel Radcliffe’s sleeping bag.In a statement sent through his publicist on Thursday, Radcliffe, whose work with Gambon spanned his teenage years, said that the loss of the actor made the world “considerably less fun,” writing:Michael Gambon was one of the most brilliant, effortless actors I’ve ever had the privilege of working with, but despite his immense talent, the thing I will remember most about him is how much fun he had doing his job. He was silly, irreverent and hilarious. He loved his job, but never seemed defined by it. He was an incredible story and joke teller and his habit of blurring the lines of fact and fiction when talking to journalists meant that he was also one of the most entertaining people with whom you could ever wish to do a press junket. The sixth film was where I got to spend the most time working with Michael and he made the hours spent in front of a green screen together more memorable and joyous than they had any right to be. I’m so sad to hear he has passed, but I am so grateful for the fact that I am one of the lucky people who got to work with him.Rupert Grint, the actor who played Ron Weasley in the series, said in an Instagram post on Thursday that Gambon brought “so much warmth and mischief to every day on set.” And Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, described Gambon as “kind kind kind” on Instagram, writing: “You never took it too seriously but somehow delivered the most serious moments with all the gravitas.” Onscreen, the darker edge Gambon brought to the role dovetailed with the trajectory of Rowling’s story, as well as the approach of the filmmaker David Yates, who directed the second half of the movie series.“He’s got to be a bit scary,” Gambon told The Los Angeles Times in 2009 of his Dumbledore. “All headmasters should be a bit scary, shouldn’t they? A top wizard like him would be intimidating. And ultimately, he’s protecting Harry. Essentially, I play myself. A little Irish, a little scary. That’s what I’m like in real life.” More

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      Michael Gambon, Dumbledore in the ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 82

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      After he made his mark in London in the 1970s, he went on to play a wide range of roles, including Edward VII, Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill.Michael Gambon, the Irish-born actor who drew acclaim from both audiences and peers for his stage and screen work, and who won even wider renown as Albus Dumbledore, the firm but kindly headmaster of the Hogwarts wizarding school, in the “Harry Potter” films, died on Wednesday night. He was 82.Mr. Gambon’s family confirmed his death in a brief statement issued on Thursday through a public relations company. “Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife, Anne, and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia,” the statement said. It did not identify the hospital where he died.The breakthrough that led the actor Ralph Richardson to call him “the great Gambon” came with Mr. Gambon’s performance in Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” at London’s National Theater in 1980, although he had already enjoyed modest success, notably in plays by Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter.Peter Hall, then the National Theater’s artistic director, described Mr. Gambon (pronounced GAM-bonn) as “unsentimental, dangerous and immensely powerful.” He recalled in his autobiography that he had approached four leading directors to accept him in the title role, only for them to reject him as “not starry enough.”After John Dexter agreed to direct him in what Mr. Gambon was to describe as the most difficult part he had ever played, the mix of volcanic energy and tenderness, sensuality and intelligence he brought to the role — in which he aged from 40 to 75 — excited not only critics but also his fellow performers.Mr. Gambon in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” at the National Theater in London in 1980. He called it the most difficult part he had ever played.Donald Cooper/AlamyAs Mr. Hall recalled, the dressing-room windows at the National, which look out onto a courtyard, “after the first night contained actors in various states of undress leaning out and applauding him — a unique tribute.”That brought Mr. Gambon a best-actor nomination at the Olivier Awards. He would win the award in 1987 for his performance as Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” at the National Theater. Again it was his blend of vulnerability and visceral force that impressed audiences; Miller declared that Mr. Gambon’s performance as the embattled longshoreman was the best he had seen. Mr. Ayckbourn, who directed the production, described Mr. Gambon as awe-inspiring.“One day he just stood in the rehearsal room and just burst into tears — no turning upstage, no hands in front of his face,” Mr. Ayckbourn said. “He just stood there and wept like a child. It was heartbreaking. And he did angry very well too. That could be scary.”Michael John Gambon was born in Dublin on Oct. 19, 1940. He became a dual British and Irish citizen after he and his seamstress mother, Mary, moved to London to join his father, Edward, an engineer helping to reconstruct the city after it had been badly bombed in 1945.By his own admission he was a dreamy student, often lost in fantasies of being other people, and he left school “pig ignorant, with no qualifications, nothing.” When the family moved from North London to Kent, he became an apprentice toolmaker at Vickers-Armstrongs, which was famous for having built Britain’s Spitfire fighter planes.The teenage Mr. Gambon had never seen a play — he said he didn’t even knew what a play was — but when he helped build sets for an amateur dramatic society in Erith, Kent, he was given a few small roles onstage. “I went vroom!,” he recalled. “I thought, Jesus, this is for me, I want to be an actor.” He joined the left-leaning Unity Theater in London, performing and taking lessons in improvisation at the Royal Court.This emboldened him to write to Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, the founders of the Gate Theater in Dublin, claiming to be a West End actor passing through the city en route to New York. An invitation ensued, as did a job as the Second Gentleman in “Othello,” followed by an offer to join Laurence Olivier’s new National Theater, which (Mr. Gambon said) was seeking burly six-footers like himself to play spear carriers.Several small or nonspeaking roles followed — Mr. Gambon remembered little but saying “Madam, your carriage awaits” to Maggie Smith in a Restoration comedy — until Olivier himself advised him to seek better parts in the provinces. That he did, closely modeling an Othello in Birmingham in 1968 on the Moor famously played at the National by Olivier, an actor Mr. Gambon said he always regarded with “absolute awe.”Mr. Gambon didn’t make his mark in London until 1974, when he played a slow-witted veterinary surgeon in Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy “The Norman Conquests.” One scene, in which he sat on a child’s chair so low that only half his face was visible, became celebrated for the hilarity it generated. Indeed, Mr. Gambon said, he actually witnessed a man “laugh so much he fell out of his seat and rolled down the gangway.”Mr. Gambon in 1987, the year he won an Olivier Award for his performance in Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.”John Stoddart/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesMr. Gambon said he disliked looking in mirrors; so unpleasant did he find his face that he compared it to a crumpled plastic bag. His jowls and his heavy build meant that he never played Hamlet or any obviously heroic or conventionally good-looking characters, yet he won universal admiration for his versatility. He seemed able to grow or shrink at will. For a man compared to a lumberjack, he was astonishingly fleet and nimble. One critic saw him as a rhinoceros that could almost tap-dance.And he brought a paradoxical delicacy to many a role: King Lear and Antony, which he played in tandem for the Royal Shakespeare Company; leading roles in Pinter’s “Betrayal” and “Old Times”; Ben Jonson’s Volpone at the National Theater; and the anguished restaurateur in David Hare’s “Skylight,” a performance he took from London to Broadway, where it earned him a Tony Award nomination for best actor in 1996.At the time he was best known in the United States for a television performance as the daydreaming invalid in Dennis Potter’s acclaimed 1986 mini-series, “The Singing Detective.” Though he always said that the theater was his great love and he pined for it when he was away, he often appeared on screens both large and small during a career in which he was virtually never out of work.Before being cast as Dumbledore, Mr. Gambon was best known in the United States for his performance as the daydreaming invalid in Dennis Potter’s acclaimed 1986 mini-series, “The Singing Detective.”BBCFrom 1999 to 2001, he won successive best-actor BAFTA awards, for “Wives and Daughters,” “Longitude” and “Perfect Strangers.” His portrayal of Lyndon B. Johnson in the 2002 mini-series “Path to War” won him an Emmy nomination, as did his Mr. Woodhouse in the 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”His television roles varied from Inspector Maigret to Edward VII, Oscar Wilde to Winston Churchill. And in film he played characters as different as Albert Spica, the coarse and violent gangster in Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,” and the benign Professor Dumbledore.Mr. Gambon took over the role of Dumbledore, a central character in the Harry Potter saga, when Richard Harris, who had originated it, died in 2002. Reviewing “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” in which he first appeared in the role, A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that the film, though noteworthy for its special effects, was also, like the two earlier films in the series, “anchored by top-of-the-line flesh-and-blood British acting,” and noted that “Michael Gambon, as the wise headmaster Albus Dumbledore, has gracefully stepped into Richard Harris’s conical hat and flowing robes.” Mr. Gambon continued to play Dumbledore through the final movie in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” released in 2011.For all the attention that role brought him, Mr. Gambon claimed not to see this or any other performance as a great accomplishment; he tended to answer interviewers who questioned him about acting by saying, “I just do it.” But in fact he prepared for his roles conscientiously. He would absorb a script, then use rehearsals to adapt and deepen his discoveries.“I’m very physical,” he once said. “I want to know how the person looks, what his hair is like, the way he walks, the way he stands and sits, how he sounds, his rhythms, how he dresses, his shoes. The way your feet feel on the stage is important.” And slowly, very slowly, Mr. Gambon would edge toward what he felt was the core of a person and, he said, rely on intuition to bring him to life onstage.Though he was no Method actor, Mr. Gambon did use memories when strong emotions were needed. He found it easy to cry onstage, he said, sometimes by thinking of the famous photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack. Acting, he said, was a compulsion, “a hard slog, heartache, misery — for moments of sheer joy.”Mr. Gambon in the 1989 film “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.”Steve Pyke/Getty ImagesIn person Mr. Gambon was elusive; he said that he didn’t exist aside from his acting and that he hated the idea of celebrity, even popularity. He adamantly refused to reveal anything about his private life to interviewers, though it’s on public record that he married Anne Miller when he was 22 and that together they had a son, Fergus. They both survive him. It is believed that they remained on good terms even after he had two other sons, Tom and William, with the set designer Philippa Hart.He was knighted in 1998.His engineering apprenticeship left him fascinated with the workings of mechanical things: clocks, old watches and especially antique guns, of which he possessed scores. He also took delight in fast cars; he once appeared on the television show “Top Gear” and drove so recklessly that a section of the track he’d taken on two wheels was renamed Gambon Corner.He became notorious for impish behavior on and off the stage. A qualified pilot, he promised to cure a fellow actor of his fear of flying by taking him up in a tiny plane, then mimed a heart attack as, his tongue lolling, he nose-dived toward outer London. Mr. Ayckbourn recalled a moment in “Othello” when Mr. Gambon shoved Iago’s head into a fountain. “Shampoo and set, shampoo and set,” roared the Moor — but such was the emotion already generated the audience reportedly didn’t notice.“I’m actually serious about my work,” Mr. Gambon once said. However, much of that work came to a premature end after he played a wily, drunken, needy Falstaff at the National Theater in 2005, followed by the alcoholic Hirst in Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” in 2008.Having admitted that he often felt terrified before making an entrance, he had panic attacks while rehearsing the role of W.H. Auden in Alan Bennett’s “The Habit of Art” in 2009 and was twice rushed to a hospital before withdrawing from the production. By then he was finding it difficult to remember lines. After playing the nonspeaking title character in Samuel Beckett’s “Eh Joe” in 2013, he announced that he would no longer perform onstage.He continued to appear on film and television, notably as the ailing title character in “Churchill’s Secret” in 2016. But his departure from theater meant that he ended his stage career with a deep sense of loss.“It’s a horrible thing to admit,” he said. “But I can’t do it. And it breaks my heart.”Alex Marshall More

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      ‘Harry Potter’ to Become a TV Series

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      The author J.K. Rowling is expected to executive produce the show, which will appear on Max, the streaming service from Warner Bros. Discovery.Harry Potter fans, some of whom have been casting spells for years in hopes of a television series about the boy wizard, can finally put their wands down and rejoice.Max, the new streaming service from Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Wednesday that it had ordered a “Harry Potter” television series based on the novels by the British author J.K. Rowling.“We are delighted to give audiences the opportunity to discover Hogwarts in a whole new way,” Casey Bloys, the chairman and chief executive of HBO and Max content, said in a statement.“Harry Potter is a cultural phenomenon and it is clear there is such an enduring love and thirst for the Wizarding World,” he said. A news release announcing the series said it would be a “faithful adaptation” of the best-selling book series, which spans seven books published between 1997 and 2007. Eight hit films based on the books were released between 2001 and 2011.The upcoming show, which is described as a decade-long series, “will feature a new cast to lead a new generation of fandom, full of the fantastic detail, much-loved characters and dramatic locations that Harry Potter fans have loved for over 25 years,” according to the release. It will be available on Max in the United States and around the world. No time frame for the show’s release was given.Ms. Rowling, who has drawn waves of criticism in recent years over her remarks on gender identity issues, will be an executive producer for the series.“Max’s commitment to preserving the integrity of my books is important to me, and I’m looking forward to being part of this new adaptation which will allow for a degree of depth and detail only afforded by a long form television series,” she said in a statement.Ms. Rowling, who has drawn criticism in recent years over her remarks on gender identity issues, will executive produce the series.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPotterheads, a term used to describe super fans of “Harry Potter,” have been grappling with the author’s comments on transgender issues for years. In 2020, she published an essay in which she said a movement of transgender activists was “seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators.”While Ms. Rowling has denied being anti-transgender, her remarks have pitted fans against each other, with some vowing to stop supporting the Potter franchise.Despite the continued debate over Ms. Rowling, products related to Harry Potter continue to sell. Earlier this year, The Hogwarts Legacy video game sold more than 12 million copies in two weeks.The television show is the latest moneymaking arm of the Potter universe, which also include feature films, a stage play, live entertainment at theme parks, studio tours and retail stores.Max, the latest entry into the crowded streaming market, will debut next month, and will cost roughly $16 a month for a commercial-free version and less for an advertising-supported tier.Last April, WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. merged, adding a new media giant to the entertainment industry. David Zaslav, the president and chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, sold shareholders on the deal in part by arguing that the combined company could have a successful app.But over the last year, the company has seen some obstacles, including shelving at least two projects and laying off part of its work force. More

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      Leslie Phillips, Comic Actor Who Sorted Wizards, Dies at 98

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      He made a name for himself in British satires, then late in his career reached a different audience as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter movies.Leslie Phillips, a British actor who in a career that began before World War II played numerous comic roles, then reached new generations of filmgoers when he provided the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter films, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 98.His agent, Jonathan Lloyd, confirmed the death.Mr. Phillips began acting as a teenager, supporting his family after his father died in his 40s. His fledgling career was interrupted by military service at the end of World War II, but in the mid-1940s he resumed it, although at first mostly in “the murkiest, rat-infested old playhouses and music halls in the North of England,” as he put it in his autobiography, “Hello” (2006).He eventually began to have success on radio, most notably on the long-running comedy show “The Navy Lark,” and he went from bit roles in films and on television to larger ones. He drew good notices for his performance in the Gene Kelly film “Les Girls” in 1957.Mr. Phillips, right, drew good reviews for his performance in the 1957 movie “Les Girls” with, from left, Jacques Bergerac and Gene Kelly.via Everett CollectionWhen he returned to England from Hollywood after that film, he told The Daily Telegraph in 2010, “I had a whole load of scripts to choose from.”“I went against my agent and said I’d do ‘Carry On Nurse,’” he added — an early entry in what became a series of popular, quickly made film comedies that over the next decades satirized the military, the medical profession, British history and even the soft-core “Emmanuelle” movies.Mr. Phillips also appeared in “Carry On Teacher” (1959) and “Carry On Constable” (1960), but he wasn’t really part of the ensemble of actors who were the core of those movies. Years later, though, in 2010, he was the presenter for “Carry On Forever!,” a BBC Radio 2 look back at the franchise.He turned up in another satirical film series, in “Doctor in Love,” in 1960 and “Doctor in Trouble” in 1970. By 1978, The Evening Post of Reading could say that Mr. Phillips “has been one of Britain’s best known and loved actors for more than 40 years,” and his career was barely half over.He worked regularly in British television after that, including recurring roles on “Chancer,” “The House of Windsor” and other series in the 1990s. He continued to appear in film comedies but also turned up in dramas, including “Out of Africa” (1985) and “The Jackal” (1997).Mr. Phillips worked on the stage as well, and though he was known for comedic catchphrases — his distinctive delivery of “Well, hello!” and “Ding dong!” were famous from the movies — he sometimes felt compelled to point out that he had a wider range.“I’ve done all the classics,” he said in the 2010 interview. “I’ve been to Stratford.”He certainly put serious actorly thought into what may have been the performance experienced by more filmgoers than any of his others: his voice work as the Sorting Hat, the all-knowing headwear that sorted new students at the Hogwarts wizarding school into their houses in the Harry Potter films, which began in 2001 with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” directed by Chris Columbus.“I worked only with the director and was given a great deal of time to get the voice right,” he told the NewsQuest Media Group in 2002. “It is quite a moment in the movie, it was a very important role to get right.”He reprised the role in several of the sequels.Leslie Samuel Phillips was born on April 20, 1924, in the Tottenham area of London to Fred and Cecilia Phillips.“I grew up surrounded by illness,” he told The Daily Mail of London in 1999, and his father, who worked for the gas board, died when Leslie was young. His mother, hoping the boy could generate some income, sent him to a stage school, and by age 14 he was going on national tours.“Always people in the cast became my uncles and aunts,” he said. “I learned a lot. They encouraged me to read and taught me all the things I hadn’t done at home or school. It was as much an education as a job.”After the war he married Penelope Bartley, an actress, and they had four children before divorcing in 1965. She later died in a fire. His second wife, Angela Scoular, also an actress, died by suicide in 2011. His survivors include his third wife, Zara Carr.In the mid-1980s Mr. Phillips’s 92-year-old mother was left seriously injured in a mugging; he said the attackers had beat her unconscious because she wouldn’t give up her handbag, which contained some family mementos. She died after several months in the hospital.“It was the biggest tragedy of my life,” he told The Daily Mail in 1993. “Horrific. I used to go into hospital to visit her and then go walking round the streets, looking for a boy wearing the yellow sweatshirt she’d described to the police.”If his personal life was full of dark episodes, his career continued to give him satisfaction.“I seem to have a very overall appeal,” he said in 2002, the year after he had been in both the first Harry Potter movie and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” another movie aimed at a youthful audience. “I get the most wonderful letters from elderly people who follow my career, and then I get an enormous amount of letters from young people.” More

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      Dobby’s Grave Can Stay on a Beach in Wales, but Please Stop Giving Him Socks

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      After a grave site for the “Harry Potter” elf became a tourist attraction, tributes to the character prompted environmental concerns.LONDON — In one of the more tragic moments from the “Harry Potter” series — spoilers ahead if you’ve been meaning to get around to it for a decade or two — Dobby, an elf, dies in Harry Potter’s arms on an expansive beach that the creature describes, in one of his final breaths, as “such a beautiful place to be with friends.”The “beautiful place” where the scene was filmed for the 2010 movie “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” was Freshwater West Beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where fans have assembled a memorial to Dobby, a recurring character in the series who befriended Harry and his fellow wizards-in-training and became a fan favorite. Environmental officials, however, became concerned that the site’s popularity with tourists was having a negative effect on the beach and considered tearing the memorial down as part of an eight-month review.Last week, Dobby’s grave site won a reprieve, when officials announced that it could stay, as long as visitors stopped leaving behind tributes to Dobby — or, from a different perspective, environmentally ruinous litter.Dobby, who is voiced by Toby Jones in the “Harry Potter” movies, in a scene from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.” Warner Brothers Pictures“The memorial to Dobby will remain at Freshwater West in the immediate term for people to enjoy,” the National Trust Wales, the conservation charity that initiated the review of the area, wrote in its assessment. “The Trust is asking visitors to only take photos when visiting the memorial to help protect the wider landscape.”Part of the problem arose from a gesture many fans most likely intended as a tribute but had damaging consequences: People kept giving Dobby socks.In the “Harry Potter” series, Harry tricks Dobby’s master, the evil Lucius Malfoy, into giving his captive elf a sock, which frees Dobby. The elf then wears the sock until his dying moment, making it a memorable symbol of his friendship with Harry.Back in the real world, socks are a bad thing to leave on a beach. Many have been left at the grave site along with messages painted on rocks to match Harry’s final tribute to his friend: “Here lies Dobby, a free elf.”The National Trust Wales said in its assessment that “items like socks, trinkets, and paint chips from painted pebbles could enter the marine environment and food chain and put wildlife at risk.” Tens of thousands of people visit the beach each year, the trust said, and more than 5,000 responded to an online survey as it sought the public’s opinion on the future of the site.“While we’re delighted that so many want to visit, we have to balance the popularity of the site with impacts on the sensitive nature of the beach and wider environment, and pressure on the facilities and surrounding roads,” Jonathan Hughes, an official with National Trust Wales, said in a statement. More

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      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

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      Quidditch Becomes ‘Quadball,’ Leaving J.K. Rowling Behind

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      Citing trademark concerns and objections to the author’s views on transgender issues, the sport’s leading groups officially distanced themselves from their “Harry Potter” roots.Quidditch, the sport of boarding school wizards riding broomsticks in “Harry Potter,” will become “Quadball” to the humans who play the game in real life, its leading organizations said on Tuesday.The groups cited financial obstacles imposed by Warner Bros., the producer of the movie series, holding the trademark to Quidditch, as well as a wish to “distance themselves” from J.K. Rowling, the author of the books, and what they called her “anti-trans positions,” referring to her contentious statements on gender identity made in recent years.“This is a bold move, and for me personally there is definitely some nostalgia to the original name,” Alex Benepe, who helped found the real-life sport in 2005, said in a statement. “But from a long-term development perspective I feel confident this is a smart decision for the future that will allow the sport to grow without limits.”The path to the decision started in December, when U.S. Quidditch and Major League Quidditch — the youth and professional wings of the sport — announced their intention to choose and trademark a new name. Their statement emphasized “sponsorship and broadcast opportunities” that were missed because of licensing issues.In a 2017 interview with The Quidditch Post, a news site devoted to the sport, Mr. Benepe praised Warner Bros. for being “remarkably permissive” in allowing a league to operate and sell tickets under the name.He added, however, that Warner Bros. had prohibited the sale of merchandise that used the word “Quidditch” and that the sport had been forced to sacrifice major business opportunities. Mr. Benepe argued at the time — before the latest political controversy with Ms. Rowling — for a name change.“I love Harry Potter and always will, but if our sport needs Harry Potter to survive it must not be that great — and I believe that it is great and I think our players do too,” he said.Nevertheless, on Tuesday the International Quidditch Association, the sport’s top governing body, listed Ms. Rowling’s “anti-trans positions” as its primary motive for changing the sport’s name.“We’ve tried to be clear that it’s both reasons,” Jack McGovern, a spokesman for U.S. Quidditch and Major League Quidditch, said in an interview. “We did not intend to give a value judgment about which reason was more important than the other.”Quidditch matches frequently appeared as scenes in the Harry Potter books and movies. The real-life version of it includes many elements taken from Ms. Rowling’s imagination of the game: the riding of brooms, hurling balls through hoops and the need to evade bludgers, and eventually catch the Golden Snitch. In real life a bludger is a rubber dodgeball, rather than a flying ball of iron, and the snitch is a tennis ball attached to a person, as in flag football.Thousands of people play the game in more than 40 countries, according to the International Quidditch Association.After her comments about transgender issues on Twitter drew widespread attention, Ms. Rowling published an essay in 2020 that raised concerns about “pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender” and the rise in gender transition among young people.Many advocates for transgender rights have called Ms. Rowling’s comments transphobic, and some fans have struggled to reconcile their love of “Harry Potter” with their objections to her views.Ms. Rowling’s representatives at The Blair Partnership said there would be no comment on the decision but said that the various Quidditch leagues had never been endorsed or licensed by her.“Quadball,” according to the International Quidditch Association, refers to the number of positions in the sport (a keeper, chaser, beater and seeker) and the number of balls (two bludgers, a quaffle and the snitch).Mr. McGovern said that the association of Quidditch with Ms. Rowling had become an obstacle in recruiting new players, and he said he did not know how much the official bodies of the sport would refer to “Harry Potter” in the future.His first exposure to real-life Quidditch, he said, came in 2010 when he was in middle school. He persuaded one of his parents to drive him from Philadelphia to New York City to see a Quidditch World Cup. He said that he was struck by the “energy and life and forward momentum” of the game, and that he was a “fan of obscure sports more generally.”Almost as an afterthought, he added, “I had been reading ‘Harry Potter’ at the time.” Asked to what extent his love for the books had motivated that early interest in the sport, Mr. McGovern replied: “It’s hard. I don’t want to say more now.” More

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      Rupert Grint of ‘Harry Potter’ Gets His Own Glasses

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      The former child actor, who stars in the creepy drama “Servant,” shops at Moscot.Rupert Grint covered his left eye with his hand and attempted to read the top few lines. “E, D, F, C, E, F,” he said slowly.“Close!” said Marilyn Blumengold, a sales associate at Moscot, the eyewear shop on the Lower East Side.This was on a recent snowy afternoon. Mr. Grint, currently shooting the fourth season of the Apple TV+ horror drama “Servant,” had driven in for the weekend from his temporary home in Philadelphia to take in the sights and maybe also have his eyes checked. He had noticed a blur in the right one, he said.But Moscot, which has been in business for more than 100 years, didn’t have an optometrist on-site on Sundays, so Mr. Grint, 33, improvised his own test, standing about 20 feet away from an eye chart at the back of the store.“Almost 20/20,” Ms. Blumengold said encouragingly.Satisfied for the moment, Mr. Grint turned his attention to picking an eyeglass frame, moving through the store shyly, unassumingly, never asking for help, but also never declining it.“I’m a very private person, an introvert,” he said. He slouched through the store in a black Issey Miyake suit that a stylist had picked out for the outing. “Strange pajamas,” he called them. “Surprisingly, I think they look good.” His red hair flopped over the top of some frames.Mr. Grint seemed overwhelmed. “There’s just so much choice,” he said, as he surveyed the rows of display cases. He said it twice. “It’s quite ‘Harry Potter,’” he added without any prompting. “Like choosing a wand.”Mr. Grint stars in the “Servant,” alongside Lauren Ambrose, left, and Toby Kebbell. The show is in its third season.Apple TV+Mr. Grint should know. He starred as Ron Weasley in all eight “Harry Potter” films. (Ron’s wand? Willow. With a core of unicorn hair.) Ms. Blumengold may or may not have known that — at one point she steered him toward a pair of round black glasses, a $300 model called the Zolman, which looked very Harry-esque.“No,” Mr. Grint said politely.When the “Harry Potter” films ended, Mr. Grint was worried that he may not make it as an adult actor. He knew how to play Ron, Harry’s brave, anxious sidekick. He didn’t know if he could play anyone else. “I definitely did think, ‘Is it too late to pick something else?’” he said.He bought a pink-and-white ice cream van, which he drove back to his family home just north of London on his last day of shooting. He thought briefly that he could make a go of that.But after taking a year off, he tried acting again. He had been sent a lot of “Potter” adjacent material — more sidekicks — but he held on for edgier, more serious, more adult work. He took a part in a Jez Butterworth play, enjoying the discipline of theater, and starred in the Crackle crime dramedy “Snatch.”His most significant post-“Potter” role has been in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Servant,” a creepy drama on Apple TV+ about a Philadelphia couple who hire a nanny to care for a baby that is actually a therapy doll. (The real baby had died in an accident.) Mr. Grint plays Julian, the baby’s supercilious uncle. “It’s quite a difficult subject, especially if you’ve got a baby,” he said.Halfway through the series, in the spring of 2020, his partner, the actress Georgia Groome, gave birth to their daughter, Wednesday G. Grint. “Having a child midway through definitely made me understand what a loss that would be,” he said.Wednesday had made him into a bit of a hypochondriac, he added. (Working on a show in which terrible things happen to bodies in nearly every episode — self-harm, self-flagellation, being buried alive — probably hasn’t helped.)“That’s why I wanted to have an eye test,” he said. “I’m slowly becoming more aware that there’s lots of moving parts in the body.”This season’s finale airs on March 25, but Mr. Grint has already begun filming the show’s fourth and final season. And, no, he has no idea what the twist will be. “It’s quite a thrill to work that way.” (It must be. He has signed on for Mr. Shyamalan’s next film, “Knock at the Cabin.”)Ms. Blumengold started him off with a classic Moscot model, the Lemtosh, a brown acetate oval frame with a slight 1950s vibe. Many of the frames have Yiddish names, though “Lemtosh” just sounds like one. Mr. Grint looked confused as he squinted at himself in the mirror. “It changes your appearance,” he said. “It changes your personality.” Into what, he wasn’t sure. But he felt that he could already see a bit better.“Very nice,” Ms. Blumengold said. “Very handsome.”“I do struggle with making decisions,” Mr. Grint said, as he tried on a pair of sunglasses.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesThen he tried on a dozen more acetate frames, toggling between rounder models including the Genug (Yiddish for “enough”) and Frankie, and rectangular ones like Kitzel (“tickle”) and Shindig, a retro unisex model. Most cost around $300.“I do struggle with making decisions,” he said. “It’s quite a responsibility, choosing.”After 40 minutes, he settled on the Yukel (“buffoon”) a clubmaster style with a thick tortoiseshell browline and a thinner gunmetal bottom.Ms. Blumengold created a customer profile and added it to his file, in case he does end up needing eyeglasses. He could always call in his eye test results and have the glasses made.But Mr. Grint didn’t want to leave empty-handed, so he set his sights on the sunglasses. After flirting with the Boychik (a term of endearment for a little boy), he turned back to the Lemtosh, this one in brown acetate frames and dark brown lens. After all, Mr. Grint is now a man.As he waited for Ms. Blumengold to box the glasses up, he popped outside for a quick vape hit. When he returned, she handed him a chamois cloth to clean them with. “This is your last Yiddish word for the day,” she said. “‘Shmatte,’ a rag.” More