A highlight of Friday’s hypefest was an appearance by Harry Potter’s giant pal Hagrid, in the person of Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane, who has played the Keeper of the Keys in all four Harry Potter films and is on tap for the fifth.
The XXL Coltrane was here sans keys to talk about “Cracker,” the wizardly British crime procedural that will return to U.S. TV on the BBC America channel this fall.
Someone asked the actor and comic if he’s tired of kids approaching him a hundred times a day to talk about sorcerers’ stones, goblets of fire and chambers of secrets.
“The good thing about ‘Harry Potter’ is I’m unrecognizable (out of costume),” he replied. “So if the 10-year-olds come up to you and give you a hard time at the airport, it’s only because their parents have told them. They’ve not seen all my other stuff, which is too scandalous for them to be allowed to stay up to watch, really.”
“Cracker,” about a profiler who cracks some of England’s grisliest murders, fits that description. So do “Van Helsing,” in which he played the horrid Mr. Hyde, and some of his edgier comic work.
“I’ve been very lucky,” reflected the versatile Scot. “I’ve had about three careers – as a sort of young, dangerous lefty comedian, then as kind of a straight actor, then as a guy who did stuff that was very near the line. And now suddenly I’m the children’s friend.
“It’s lovely to be able to do that, because 20 years ago there was a kind of hole they stuck you in and said, ‘That’s the sort of actor you are, and that’s what you’ll do until you go to Palm Springs and die.’ “
[thanks to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
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