It’s truly hard to take in the full lifetime of a truly decorated and respected performer. Whether your work is conducted on stage, in a film studio, or on a television sound stage, you can’t really be summed up for what you do in character if your resume is so decorated.
And that’s why, with an extremely heavy heart, I have to report on the life and death of one of the greatest performers of our lifetime, Michael Gambon, who passed away at age 82.
Most people will recognize Gambon as the second Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter franchise. He took over after Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, who passed away due to Hodgkin’s disease.
Gambon’s bombastic and one-of-kind take on the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was life changing for many fans, myself included. Though Harris did a fantastic job at capturing the nurturing side of Dumbledore, Gambon really embodied the headmaster’s more gray side and let fans into the darker aspects of the fearless school teacher.
However, Gambon was a supremely decorated actor outside of Harry Potter. Most of his accolades lay more with the theater stage than film and television, as he acted inside various theater walls from 1962 to 2018.
Gambon got his theater start in Shakespeare’s Othello and ended with Harold Pinter’s One for the Road. He received a ton of awards and nominations for his theater work, including a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play for the Show Skylight and the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for The Singing Detective.
Gambon was truly a legendary talent who did his very best to bring his all to every role he was cast in, whether it was in the theater, on television, or holding a wand. He will be missed dearly.
(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)
