How Dumbledore became Michael Gambon’s most recognisable role

Michael Gambon as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

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 theatre or film reviews, but in forums for the Harry Potter fandom, where dedicated Hogwarts obsessives would dissect his every on-screen utterance as 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 wizardlike 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 (Thursday NZ time). 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’ 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 Bertolt Brecht and Harold Pinter it was Dumbledore that became his most recognisable — 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, kindhearted 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 JK 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, 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 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.”

On-screen, the darker edge Gambon brought to the role dovetailed with the trajectory of Rowling’s story as well as the approach of 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.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Julia Jacobs

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