“I’ve always been an obsessive collector of things,” he told a Guardian interviewer in 2004. “Richard Briers collects stamps. I collect cars and guns, which are much more expensive, and much more difficult to store.”
While apprenticing as a toolmaker, Gambon studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, making his professional stage debut in Dublin’s the Gate Theatre production of “Othello” (1962).
He caught the attention of actor Laurence Olivier, who hired him to join the newly-formed National Theatre Company. Four years later, Gambon joined the Birmingham Repertory Company, finally playing title roles in his favorite Shakespearean plays.
It wasn’t until the 1980s that Gambon became a household name playing lead character Philip Marlow in the 1986 Anglo-American public television mini-series “The Singing Detective.”
In 1990 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Eight years later he was made a Knight Bachelor for his services to drama.
But it was as Hogwarts’ headmaster Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” film series that Gambon will perhaps be best remembered, a role he took up following the death of Richard Harris in 2002. In all, Gambon was cast as Dumbledore for six of the eight “Harry Potter” films.
