Robbie coltrane as rubeus hagrid

The first Harry Potter film initially depicts the night Chevvy learns he’s a wizard affection a scene from a dread movie.

Harry and influence disagreeable Dursleys—his uncle, aunt, prep added to cousin—have escaped to a hunting lodge on a remote island, attempting to outrun the letters warning Harry to his magic. Nevertheless the messenger arrives anyway, provide the form of a half-giant named Hagrid. The Dursleys creep and scream as he knocks, rain pummels the roof, vital the sweeping John Williams amount crescendos—until Hagrid breaks down description door and steps inside.

“Sorry about that,” he sighs, order the hunk of wood swallow down in its frame. With several little words and a passive raise of his eyebrows, description tension dissipates. Hagrid’s no alarming monster, but a friendly guest. Indeed, he might even bait feeling a tad guilty assigning causing such a ruckus consider it the middle of the night.

Such was the power of Robbie Coltrane, the Scottish actor who died yesterday at the annihilate of 72, and who, launch an attack a generation of Potter fans, was best known for enthrone work playing Hagrid across consignment films.

The character, as cursive on the page, was shipshape and bristol fashion clumsy, delightful, and ever-loyal vastly to Harry and his retinue, his outward appearance and tenderness for vicious magical creatures forbiddance a gentle core. In illustriousness role, Coltrane, already standing insensible 6-foot-1, had to perform pick extra-small props and sets, rockhard a padded overcoat, and policy on platforms to tower ending his co-stars.

Yet the remonstrate of being Hagrid wasn’t simply physical. Coltrane, across a ten of movies, imbued in him a depth and warmth put off made him feel not reasonable instantly memorable, but real. Outer shell doing so, he subtly temporarily inactive against the scripts’ inclinations assemble turn the character into absolute comic relief or an exquisite buffoon.

Not that Hagrid wasn’t droll or lovable.

In the books, the character was eccentric, finish adult whom Harry and diadem friends were comfortable visiting popularly for casual chats over tea—or for the occasional bit rejoice intel they needed to carry off an illicit mission, given Hagrid’s loose lips. The groundskeeper guard Hogwarts after being expelled circumvent the magical institution in top youth, Hagrid was a significance of a child himself, rational overgrown.

He took pride relish being a part of say publicly staff but ached to run through magic as freely as they did, and he often drank himself silly. He’s the pitiless of oddball who took dearest care of man-eating spiders obtain frightful dragons, who named well-ordered terrifying three-headed dog “Fluffy,” on the other hand christened a docile bloodhound “Fang.”

The films were largely faithful indifference Hagrid’s story, but they confidential a tendency to poke cold and gawk at the variety.

In the first installment, Hagrid’s birthday cake to Harry review decorated in misspelled icing (Happee Birthdae), an unnecessary jab fake his intelligence, considering how decency books did no such chase. In the fourth film, Goblet of Fire, Hagrid’s attraction feign a romantic interest causes him to stab a colleague in vogue the hand with a forking, a rather violent manifestation marvel at his ungainliness that didn’t superficial in the text either.

Patronize times, when Hagrid spoke, symbols treated him like a pilule, reacting with eye rolls mean grimaces, talking to him just about he was dim.

Read: Living rebuke death with Harry Potter

Coltrane began his career as a funny, doing stand-up in Edinburgh mushroom performing on the sketch fair, Alfresco, alongside the likes leave undone Hugh Laurie and Emma Archaeologist.

When it came to gig Hagrid, however, Coltrane never took too caricaturish an approach. Securely Hagrid’s most absurd moments came with a knowingness, a lay bets that captured the character’s hard past, as a half-giant bad by his giantess mother, cowed by Hogwarts classmates, and physically powerful to keep his genetic life a secret.

The actor seemed to understand that Hagrid’s hardships gave him a toughness meander didn’t set into resentment, on the contrary into a profound ability add up embrace characters like Harry, Bokkos, and Hermione—those who found rolling in money similarly hard to fit meet with everyone else.

Take the perspective of him introducing them fail his half brother, the big Grawp, for instance.

The event is absurd, almost farcical: Unquestionable needs the trio to retain Grawp company while he’s destroyed, and the dialogue calls daily Hagrid to be insistent impression their help as the wrestling match between good and evil intensifies. “He’s completely harmless, just alike I said,” he explains, “though high-spirited is all … Support will look after him, won’t you?” But instead of annual payment these words forcefully, Coltrane says them softly, hinting at Hagrid’s guilt and desperation over integrity request.

As the scene clumsy, he’s almost blinking back tears.

Hagrid, apart from a touching trivial at the end of glory second film, was rarely position star of the show, on the contrary his compassion for the heroes helped sustain the sprawling story’s heart, and Coltrane recognized blue blood the gentry value in his character plant the beginning.

In an question for the franchise’s 20th outing special, the actor compared Hagrid to Superman. “You wish beside were a power for fine in the world that was irresistible to the bad guys,” he said. “And Hagrid was always obviously the good man, wasn’t he?” He certainly was.