Robbie Coltrane

Robbie Coltrane was born in the Glasgow suburb of Rutherglen. He studied drawing, painting and film at Glasgow School of Art before going on to Edinburgh's Moray House College of Education, where he studied art and made a documentary film, Young Mental Health, voted Film of the Year (1973) by the Scottish Education Council. He has alternated an award-winning television career with a successful life in films.

He received his first BAFTA TV nomination for his role as Big Jazza Danny McGlone in the musical series Tutti Frutti, but it was his iconic role as the abrasive forensic psychologist Fitz Fitzgerald in Cracker which brought him a succession of honours, including three Best Actor awards from BAFTA and one each from the Broadcasting Press Guild and the Royal Television Society. Amongst his television credits, he was a member of the Alfresco comedy cast which included Emma Thompson, and a stalwart of the long-running Comic Strip resents.... ensemble.

His career in films began in 1980, playing a limousine driver in Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch and, in the same year, filling the key role of Man At Airfield in Mike Hodges' space extravaganza Flash Gordon.

1990 brought him his most popular role to date, in Jonathan Lynn's Nuns on the Run with Eric Idle. The Bond franchise called, with a key role in Goldeneye alongside Pierce Brosnan as 007, a role he repeated in 1999's The World Is Not Enough, and he also supported Inspector Johnny Depp as a loyal Sergeant in the Hughes Brothers' Jack The Ripper investigation From Hell.

He made his first appearance as the giant Rubeus Hagrid in 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, repeating the role in another six episodes. In 2011 he was honoured for his outstanding contribution to film by BAFTA Scotland and, as further affirmation, a poll of two thousand adults voted Robbie the sixth most famous Scot after the Loch Ness Monster, Robert Burns, Sean Connery, Robert The Bruce and William Wallace.

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