Sir Michael Gambon has died at the age of 82, his family announced Thursday.
The Irish-English actor starred in dozens of films but is perhaps best known internationally for playing Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.
A statement issued on behalf of his wife, Lady Gambon, and son, Fergus Gambon said: “We are devastated to announce the loss of Sir Michael Gambon.
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“Beloved husband and father, Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife Anne and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia.”
While Gambon was proud of his Irish roots, he only lived in Ireland until the age of 5, when his family, like hundreds of thousands of others, emigrated to London in search of opportunity.
“I have no memory of it,” he told an interviewer for the Irish Times in 2010. “I was only a kid when I was taken to England, so I remember very little. I remember coming back on holidays with my parents, going to the seaside and all that, but I don’t remember anything else. It’s all a blur.”
He added: “I became a London boy. I used to run around the streets of London by myself at the age of 8. You could walk right across London and do all sorts of stuff. I’d spend my time breaking into London Zoo.”
His first forays into the world of acting came at the urging of his father, he said, who was an engineer and “a bit of a communist” and encouraged him to volunteer at a local radical playhouse, the Unity Theatre, which he said put on “communist plays about capitalists.”
“I went round and they immediately said: ‘Will you be in the play tonight? All you’ve got to do is walk on with a cup and a saucer and ask can you have more tea.’”
His first major role was in a production of Othello in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, and from there he went on to spend three years under Laurence Olivier as part of the National Theatre Company, before graduating to a wide variety of screen roles.
He will, however, likely be best remembered for his role as Harry’s loyal friend and mentor, Professor Albus Dumbledore, in the latter six of the eight Harry Potter films, a role he took on after the first Dumbledore, Richard Harris, died in 2002.
Speaking about the part, he told the Irish Times: “There’s no character really, it’s just me! Me dressed up in a costume! I’m essentially playing myself, that’s all I’m doing.”
