Born Anthony Robert McMillan in Rutherglen, Scotland, Coltrane was in his early 20s when he began pursuing an acting career and renamed himself in honour of jazz musician John Coltrane.
He already had a notable screen career, with credits including Mona Lisa, Nuns on the Run and Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Henry V when he broke through on his own as a hard-bitten detective in Cracker, the 1990s TV series for which he won best actor at the British Academy Television Awards three years running.
Robbie Coltrane in Cracker.
He went on to appear in all eight Harry Potter movies as the young wizard’s mentor and had a wide variety of other parts, including a Russian crime boss in the James Bond thrillers GoldenEye and The World is Not Enough and Pip’s guardian Jaggers in a 2012 adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations. More recently, he received rave reviews for playing a beloved TV star who may harbour a dark secret in the 2016 mini-series National Treasure.
In a statement, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, 33, called Coltrane “one of the funniest people I’ve met.”