Robbie Coltrane is the actor who plays Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films. This page contains a Robbie Coltrane biography, pictures and links.

Robbie, who'd take the name Coltrane due to his love of jazz, began to hang out with actors in Glasgow and Edinburgh, performing on the fringes of the Edinburgh Festival, as well as working as a chauffeur.This alternative comedy background led him into The Comic Strip series, Blackadder, Eric Idle's Nuns On The Run, and the Comic Strip's The Pope Must Die. He also starred in his comic peer Lenny Henry's first serious effort, Alive And Kicking, playing a tough social worker threatening and cajoling a junkie (played by Henry himself) back onto the straight and narrow.

This led to the role of Eddie Fitzgerald, the self-indulgent forensic psychologist in Jimmy McGovern's new series, Cracker. This was his major break and won him three consecutive BAFTAs. Next Robbie Coltrane embarked on the Bond flick Goldeneye (as Valentin Zukovsky, KGB man turned St Petersburg crime lord) a role he reprised for The World Is Not Enough. Returning to the Bond set, he was immediately involved in a fight scene with Pierce Brosnan, who delivered a perfectly deadpan "God, it's been ages since I strangled you, Coltrane".

Robbie Coltrane went on to star in Johnny Depp's Jack The Ripper shocker, From Hell, where Depp played the psychic and opium-addicted Inspector Abberline and Coltrane acted as his Watson, keeping him from harm in a corrupt, seedy and dangerous Victorian milieu. And, most famously of all, Coltrane came to be the weird giant Rubeus Hagrid, unable to keep his mouth shut in Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone. It's said that, along with Maggie Smith, Coltrane was the only cast member personally requested by authoress JK Rowling. He would be called back for the sequels, The Chamber Of Secrets, The Prisoner Of Azkaban and The Goblet Of Fire.

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