French poster card for Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989), a French-Dutch-British coproduction, starring Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, and Alan Howard. The mise-en-scene was inspired by paintings by Frans Hals, Rubens and Van Dyck. Card editor unnown, no. 547, 'Le cuisinier, le voleur, sa femme et son amant".
On 27 September 2023, Irish actor Michael Gambon, born in Dublin, 19 October 1940, died at the hospital of Witham in Essex, UK, because of a bout of pneumonia.
Gambon moved to London with his parents when he was five years old. Initially trained as an engineer, he decided to become an actor at the age of 21. Gambon started his acting career with Laurence Olivier as one of the original members of the Royal National Theatre. Over his six-decade-long career, he received three Olivier Awards and was nominated for thirteen of them. In addition to many roles on stage in plays by Shakespeare, Ayckbourn, and Pinter, he also played for television and in films which brought him fame among the general public. Gambon made his film debut in Othello (1965). His other notable films include The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), The Wings of the Dove (1997), The Insider (1999), Gosford Park (2001), Amazing Grace (2006), The King's Speech (2010), Quartet (2012), and Victoria & Abdul (2017). Gambon also appeared in the Wes Anderson films The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). He was also an important televsison actor. For instance, he played the role of Philip Marlow in the television series The Singing Detective based on a script by Dennis Potter, and Oscar Wilde in the 1985 BBC television series Oscar. He also starred in the BBC television series Cranford and the historical mini-series Longitude, in which he shaped the main character: clockmaker John Harrison.
From the filming of the third Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he played the role of headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films following the death of his predecessor Richard Harris in 2002. Gambon also took on the role of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, an attraction at Universal's Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Japan. In 1998, he received an OBE from the Queen of England for his contribution to British drama and thus became Sir Michael Gambon. Gambon held a pilot's licence and had a love of cars. This love led to an invitation to the BBC programme Top Gear. Gambon raced a Suzuki Liana around the circuit and, due to his aggressive driving style, flew off the track at the final corner. This corner was hence named the Gambon in the programme.
For his work on television, Gambon received four BAFTA Awards for The Singing Detective (1986), Wives and Daughters (1999), Longitude (2000), and Perfect Strangers (2001). He also received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Path to War (2002) and Emma (2009). Gambon's other notable projects include Cranford (2007) and The Casual Vacancy (2015). In 2017, he received the Irish Film & Television Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, he was listed at No. 27 on The Irish Times's list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Sources: Dutch and English Wikipedia, IMDb.
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