Part of the film series’ charm is the ensemble cast of luminary British actors and actresses. From Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore to Ralph Fiennes’ Voldemort, they’ve cast a lingering spell on audiences around the worldby Richard Corliss
Star-Studded Cast
One of the smartest decisions made by the creative team behind the Harry Potter films was to cast the adult roles from the very cream of British thespians. If you're among the brightest luminaries of the London stage or international screen — and if you weren't too famously connected with the competing Lord of the Rings trilogy, like Sir Ian McKellen — you've probably played a Harry Potter witch or wizard. Some of these stars, like Julie Christie and Kenneth Branagh, have appeared only fleetingly or in a single film; others, like Alan Rickman and Michael Gambon, are at the core of the enterprise. The series is essentially about the coming of age of Daniel Radcliffe's Harry, but the actors who have played his guardians and tormentors have given Radcliffe, and millions of delighted viewers, lessons in effortless screen éclat.Warner Bros.
Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, 5, 7
Pink and perky, and with her office walls covered with moving pictures of cats, Dolores Umbridge at first seems another harmless eccentric as the fifth book's Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Soon, though, she's the students' nightmare: a stealthy Stalinist with a smile like a rictus. It's a delightfully seditious role for which Staunton, 54, was well suited. London-born, of Irish parentage, she's barely five feet tall and would escape the notice of most casting directors. That's her gift: disappearing into any role she inhabits. She won raves, and an Oscar nomination, as the cheerful abortionist in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, and will work with Leigh in his next film.Warner Bros. / Everett
Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn, 6, 8
At first he's disguised as an armchair, explaining his ruse by saying, "It's all in the upholstery. I come by the stuffing naturally." Professor Slughorn, recruited by Dumbledore to teach Potions, does have the soft, ample contours of living-room furniture, and an amiable, fumbling but calculating nature that suggests a wizard not in the Rowling canon: Oz. Broadbent, 61, often plays expansive impresario types — as W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, and in Moulin Rouge!, the first Narnia film and the latest Indiana Jones. Yet he won his Oscar for a quieter role, as John Bayley in Iris. It's one more indication of the range and depth displayed by all the distinguished actors in the Harry Potter films.Warner Bros.
Robbie Coltrane as Rubeus Hagrid, 1-8
Most of Potter thespians came to their roles after playing Shakespeare and Shaw. Coltrane, 60, started his career as a stand-up comic. Born Anthony Robert McMillan (he took his stage name in tribute to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane), this big Scotsman graduated to starring roles on TV, notably as the forensic psychologist Eddie Fitzgerald in the long-running ITV and A&E crime series Cracker. (Coltrane's father had been a police pathologist in Glasgow.) His performance as the Russian mob boss Valentin Zukovsky battling James Bond in Goldeneye won him an encore in The World Is Not Enough. J.K. Rowling chose Coltrane to play the half-Giant Hagrid — large of stature and heart, and Harry's most devoted, reliable friend on the Hogwarts staff.Everett
John Hurt as Ollivander, 1, 7-8
A small, soft package of the wiliest eccentricity, this 70-year-old son of a Derbyshire vicar has been pouring his pale frame and honeyed voice into distinctive roles for nearly a half-century. Hurt didn't need an alien busting out of his chest (in Ridley Scott's 1979 space thriller) to attract attention. He also packed startle and wit into his interpretations of real-life characters: the pioneering uncloseted gay Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant, the mad, preening Caligula in the BBC's I, Claudius and John Herrick, the deformed, saintly Elephant Man (which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor). Of all the Potter thespians, Hurt has had the longest interlude between gigs: his Ollivander appeared in the first installment and now in the last. Is the little old wandmaker a force for good or evil? It's complicated; but we know that, with Hurt in the role, he'll be worth watching.Everett
David Thewlis as Remus Lupin, 3, 5, 7-8
The new Dark Arts Professor in Prison of Azkaban, Remus in an earlier era was a Hogwarts friend of Harry's parents, James and Lily Potter. Bitten by one of Voldemort's werewolves, he would vanish during full moons but remained a sympathetic and heroic figure. Thewlis, 47, the son of a Blackpool, Lancashire, toy merchant, came to London with a rock band but soon made more powerful sounds as an actor. He enjoyed his first success with improv director Mike Leigh: as a man who can speak only through jokes in The Short & Curlies, as a louche boyfriend in Life Is Sweet and, in a career-defining performance, as Naked's brutal, clever drifter. Thewlis brings a haunted tenderness to Lupin; he helps Harry in the boy wizard's darkest Deathly Hallows hours.Everett
Brendan Gleeson as Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody, 4, 5, 7
With a glass orb that wanders erratically and piercingly, Mad-Eye joined Hogwarts in Goblet of Fire — one of the retinue of eccentric professors who are not what they seem. Turns out Mad-Eye is a charter member of the anti-Voldemort Order of the Phoenix, founded many years ago by Dumbledore, and including Hagrid, Lupin, Snape (yes, Snape) and Harry's parents James and Lily Potter. Whether playing heroic or villainous types, Gleeson, 55, always brings a roguish strength to his roles. Subsidizing his acting vocation with a job teaching Gaelic and Phys. Ed. at a secondary school, this Dublin native became a full-time actor at 34. He earned early acclaim as Michael Collins in the Irish TV film The Treaty and as the gangster Martin Cahill in John Boorman's The General. In 2009 won an Emmy impersonating Winston Churchill in Into the Storm. Gleeson's son Domhnall plays Ron Weasley's brother Bill in the Deathly Hallows films.Warner Bros.
Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange, 5-8
A star at 19 in her first feature, A Room With a View, this descent of the British aristocracy, and great-niece of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, might have been typecast playing titled ingénues (the girl queen in Lady Jane, Ophelia to Mel Gibson's Hamlet). But Bonham Carter, 44, had a wilder streak, which she sported as the Xanax-addicted Maria in Fight Club and the conniving Kate Cloy in the 1997 adaptation of Henry James The Wings of the Dove. The poisonous flower in Bonham Carter came to full bloom in two roles for her husband, director Tim Burton — as the misanthropic baker of human meat pies in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and the screaming Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. Her Bellatrix is woven of this same dense cloth: calculating, castrating, a monarch of sick mischief. See, she's still playing royalty.Warner Bros.
Bill Nighy as Rufus Scrimgeour, 7 and 8
If the Academy handed out an award for Best Overacting, Nighy would win every year. His wild eyes, weirdly drawling elocution and scarecrow body language raise scenery-chewing to an epicurean art. A stalwart of British theater, particularly David Hare plays, he is most warmly remembered by movie audiences for playing the drug-addled rock star Billy Mack in Love Actually. Coming late to supporting-star status (he's 60), Nighy won notoriety in two popular film series: as the pirate Davy Jones in the last two Pirates of the Caribbean offerings and as Viktor the snooty vampire in the Underworld trilogy. He's also terrific playing the newspaper publisher in the BBC miniseries State of Play. As Scrimgeour, Nighy is the new Minister of Magic, trying to retain his menacing authority over Harry, Ron and Hermione. He's a welcome late addition to the honor roll of Potter Thespians.Warner Bros.
Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, 1-8
With lips permanently curled in derision, and a voice like satin soaked in bile, this Welsh-Irish character actor was J.K. Rowling's choice to incarnate Snape. Honestly, who else? Rickman, 64, achieved his first and lasting prominence on stage as the maleficent Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and on screen as the purring baddie Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard. Snape, a Hogwarts classmate of Harry's sainted parents, and the Potions teacher in the first five films, is promoted to Defense Against the Dark Arts this time — a measure of Dumbledore's somewhat perplexing trust in him. To this crucial character Rickman brings a lovely mixture of wit and threat: in Half-Blood Prince he provokes the tensest shivers and the biggest laugh.Warner Bros.
Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, 1-8
Professor McG. is the Hogwarts deputy headmistress and professor of Transfiguration — and, as head of Gryffindor House, den mother to Harry, Ron and Hermione. For a half-century Dame Maggie, 75, has been one of Britain's warmest, most glittering theatrical lights. In the '60s she played Desdemona to Laurence Olivier's Othello and won her first Academy Award (Best Actress, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). In 1978 she picked up another Oscar for California Suite (Best Supporting Actress). Imperious but fair, Minerva has a flutey, undercutting good humor. In the first Potter film, after Harry and Ron have improbably aced a Transfiguration test, she proclaims: "Five points will be awarded to each of you — for sheer dumb luck."Warner Bros.
Fiona Shaw as Petunia Dursley, 1-3, 5, 7
Petunia, sister of Harry's mother Lily, and her husband Vernon grudgingly assumed the task of raising the boy after his parents' death. Not raising, exactly: more treating him like an unsettled dog and making him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs. Petunia gets a reading both sullen and fluttery from Shaw, 52, the piercingly eccentric Irish actress who has dabbled in film (My Left Foot, Persuasion, The Black Dahlia) but is most revered for playing the title roles — Medea, Electra, Hedda Gabler and a potent, plausible Richard II — in revivals directed by Deborah Warner. She immerses herself so deeply in these parts that she comes out drenched.Warner Bros.
Richard Griffiths as Vernon Dursley, 1-3, 5, 7
A man of grand and troubling girth, and charm every bit as capacious, Griffiths, 63, scored a triumph as the beloved teacher in Alan Bennett's The History Boys on stage and in the film version. He also played Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe on the BBC series Pie in the Sky and appeared with Daniel Radcliffe, a.k.a. Harry Potter, in the West End and Broadway revival of Peter Shaffer's Tony-winning play Equus. His Vernon is a pompous domestic sadist, fuming, against all evidence, that "There's no such thing as magic!" and wishing devoutly for Harry's death or, at least, permanent departure.Warner Bros.
Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore, 3-8
"The Great Gambon" (Ralph Richardson's phrase) assumed the role of the Hogwarts headmaster after the death of Richard Harris, the Dumbledore of the first two films. Gambon's cello voice and rumpled face lend majesty and humanity to the series' central adult role, as the great wizard takes on the mission of Harry's safekeeping. Gambon, 70, was picked for stardom by Laurence Olivier and had a small role in the 1965 Othello, with Maggie Smith. A few years later he was asked to audition as James Bond, but found his ample niche in the theater (Lear and Falstaff, Chekhov, plenty of Pinter) and on TV (as Inspector Maigret and the star of Dennis Potter's immortal miniseries The Singing Detective). Fellow actor Simon Callow has said that Gambon's "iron lungs and overwhelming charisma" reach the farthest seat in the biggest theater. As Dumbledore, he projects a more intimate magnificence.Warner Bros.
Emma Thompson as Sybil Trelawny, 3, 5, 8
She's a bit of a klutz, and her predictions don't always pan out, but Sybil, the Divinations teacher at Hogwarts, did foretell the wizarding world–shaking battle between Harry and Voldemort. She's a sad, comic character, equally annoying and endearing, as played by this distinguished comedienne. The child of actors, and an undergrad star at Cambridge, Thompson, 51, is the only person to have won Oscars as both actress (Remains of the Day) and screenwriter (Sense and Sensibility). Thompson's ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh, was the flashy Prof. Gilderoy Lockhart in the second Potter film.Warner Bros. / Everett
Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, 3-5, 8
The prisoner of Azkaban himself, Sirius is reviled in the official wizarding community but was cherished by James and Lily Potter, at whose wedding he was best man, and he becomes an attentive if furtive godfather to Harry. Playing haunted creatures is nothing new to Oldman, 52, who enjoyed big early splashes as the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy and gay playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears. He was Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK and a rodentoid Dracula for Francis Coppola. Oldman's scenery-shredding performance style has become more sedated of late; he played the harried, sympathetic Commissioner Gordon in the first two films of the current Batman cycle.Warner Bros. / Everett
Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, 4-8
He is often spoken of — as The Dark Lord, He Who Must Not Be Named or the more familiar but still ominous You-Know-Who — and rarely seen. Plotting his takeover from remote corners of the wizarding world, assigning his envoys to do most of the dirty work, Voldemort needs to be incarnated, in his few appearances, by someone who can summon a majesty that is both satanic and romantic. That's a job for Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 47, who has played demon lovers (Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, the disfigured Count in The English Patient) and just plain demons, notably the Nazi commandant in Schindler's List. Voldemort should become a starring role for Fiennes in the two-part finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.Warner Bros. / Everett
