Michael Gambon, actor who played Albus Dumbledore in six Harry Potter movies, passes away

London: British-Irish actor Michael Gambon, best known to global audiences for playing the wise professor Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” movie franchise and whose career was launched by his mentor Laurence Olivier, passed away aged 82 on Thursday.

His widow Lady Gambon and son Fergus said their “beloved husband and father” died peacefully in hospital with his family by his side, following a bout of pneumonia.

Gambon began his acting on the stage in the early 1960s and later moved into TV and film. Notable film roles include a psychotic mob leader in Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” in 1989 and the elderly King George V in Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” in 2010.

But his best-known role was as Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” franchise, a role he took over from the third instalment in the eight-movie series after he replaced the late Richard Harris in 2004. Gambon played down the praise for his performance and said he simply played himself “with a stuck-on beard and a long robe”.

Michael John Gambon was born on Oct. 19, 1940, in Dublin to a seamstress mother and an engineer father.