Robbie Coltrane is one of Britain’s most popular and versatile actors. During the 1980s, he became a household name following a succession of spirited comedic stage, cinema, and small-screen appearances. In the 1990s, Coltrane’s celebrity developed internationally, with his acting repertoire maturing to include dramatic roles, as befitted his more mellow temperament and professional confidence.

In the mid-1970s, Coltrane became involved in repertory theater in Edinburgh, before a brief stint in New York, where he participated in several experimental films. Returning to England, Coltrane achieved his first major stage success in The Slab Boys, a bittersweet trilogy about Glaswegian youth written by ex–college mate John Byrne. Relocating to London in the early 1980s, Coltrane became associated with the city’s burgeoning, politically charged stand-up comedy movement. There he headlined alongside the likes of Rik Mayall, Jennifer Saunders, Ade Edmondson, and Dawn French—to name only a few of the talents who would soon become, collectively and individually, the core of British broadcasting’s “alternative” comedy. Coltrane’s first television credits were earned in various programs, taking first sketch then narrative forms, centered around the satirical humor generated by this new-wave troupe. He costarred in A Kick Up the Eighties and Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee; he was a regular in The Comic Strip Presents; and he frequently appeared as minor characters in shows such as Blackadder’s Christmas Carol.

Effortlessly humorous, yet sharply critical, Coltrane proved to be an immediate audience favorite. Full-bodied and unpretentious, the Scotsman was often bracketed with his fellow comedic social commentator Alexei Sayle. But whereas Sayle was manic and edgy, constantly exposing his personal identity, Coltrane’s exuberant delivery was channeled into his role-playing and his amazing ability to parody the self-righteous through imitation. The Scot’s capacity to produce more mainstream material is evident in his prodigious work record, his marketability as a celebrity endorser of commercial products, and his mass appeal across a variety of audiences and age groups.

Coltrane’s enthusiasm for his performances is unassailable. His own personal passions and vices—chain-smoking, 1950s cars, an appreciation for the style (if not the substance) of Chandleresque masculinity— have become recurrent motifs that function as backdrops to his stage and screen personae. Since the mid-1980s, Coltrane has rapidly progressed from supporting roles in such successful feature films as Mona Lisa and Defence of the Realm to made-to-measure, screen-stealing leads in Henry V (an homage to Orson Welles amid a tribute to Sir Laurence Olivier), Nuns on the Run, and The Pope Must Die! Occasionally miscast as a genial funnyman, Coltrane has starred in his share of lightweight comedies. However, as a known box-office property, he is now able to choose his Hollywood offers more selectively—for example, electing to play the villain in the James Bond revivals Goldeneye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), and taking on the role of Hagrid the giant caretaker in the blockbuster Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001; U.S. release as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone).

Coltrane’s maturity as a thespian has been achieved less in cinema than on the stage and in his television performances, where his ability to convincingly portray complex characters and convey contradictory emotions has more fully developed. His own enigmatic personality ( jocular and acutely perceptive, sensitive, forthright, both worldly and down-to-earth) combined with his penchant for panache (with its mixture of grand style and garish display) often surface in his TV roles. As Danny McGlone in the hit 1987 miniseries Tutti Frutti, Coltrane portrayed the endearing, converted Stirlingshire farmhouse. Proclaiming his hell-raising years to be over, Coltrane consciously sought dramatic roles. In a part written for him by social realist Jimmy McGovern, Coltrane played Dr. Eddie Fitzgerald, a forensic psychologist for the Manchester police force, in Granada TV’s Cracker. “Fitz” applies his incredible mental agility to outwit suspects and solve a series of heinous crimes, all the while evidencing shortcomings of his own brought on by personal overindulgence and “deviant” behavior (drinking, smoking, debt, domestic ruin). Extremely well received in Britain and North America, Cracker’s nine stories represent Coltrane’s most accomplished screen performance to date—one rewarded with numerous industry honors, including the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ Award for Best Television Actor in 1995.