Actor Robbie Coltrane, Harry Potter’s Hagrid, dies at 72

LONDON (AP) — Robbie Coltrane, the baby-faced comedian and character actor whose hundreds of roles included a crime-solving psychologist on the TV series “Cracker” and the gentle half-giant Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” movies, has died. He was 72.

Coltrane’s agent Belinda Wright said he died Friday at a hospital in his native Scotland, and did not immediately offer other details. She called him “forensically intelligent” and “brilliantly witty” in just one of many tributes made to him.

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who decades ago had said Coltrane was her first choice to play Hagrid, tweeted Friday that he was “an incredible talent, a complete one-off.”

“I was beyond fortunate to know him, work with him and laugh my head off with him,” she wrote.

Born Anthony Robert McMillan in Rutherglen, Scotland, Coltrane was in his early 20s when he pursued an acting career and renamed himself in honor of jazz musician John Coltrane.

He had a notable screen career, with credits including “Mona Lisa” and Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of “Henry V” when he broke through on his own as a detective in “Cracker,” the 1990s series which he won best actor at the British Academy Television Awards three years running.

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 Mr. Jaggers in a 2012 adaptation of Dickens’ “Great Expectations.”