Robbie Coltrane

Coltrane lives near Glasgow, is married and has two children, and collects vintage cars. Finally, towards the end of his life, Cushing played the detective in old age, in The Masks of Death for Channel 4. His roles went from strength to strength in the 1990s with the TV series Cracker (1993-1996) and a BAFTA award as the stepping stone to parts in bigger films such as the James Bond films Goldeneye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999), as well as giant Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). He followed this up with a performance in 16 episodes of the BBC series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (1968), of which unfortunately only 6 episodes survive. He also played a would-be private detective obsessed with Humphrey Bogart in the TV play The Bogie Man. Cushing played Sherlock Holmes numerous times, starting with Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the first colour Holmes film. He co-starred with Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run (1990), and played the Pope in The Pope Must Die (1991). He was one of many stars to guest on The Morecambe and Wise Show – the standing joke in his case being the idea that he was never paid for his appearance.

On television he also appeared in Tutti Frutti (1987), as Samuel Johnson in Blackadder (1987) (a role he later reprised in the more serious Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands (1993)), and in a number of stand-up and sketch comedy shows. Who and the Daleks and Daleks — Invasion Earth 2150 AD) based on the television series Doctor Who. He soon moved into films, obtaining small roles in a number of movies such as Death Watch (1980), Scrubbers (1983), Absolute Beginners (1986) and Mona Lisa (1986). Who in two movies (Dr. His comic skills brought him roles in the television series The Comic Strip Presents (1982) and he was one of the stars of Laugh? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee (1984). In the mid-1960s, he played the eccentric human scientist Dr. He moved into acting in his early twenties, taking the stage name Coltrane (in tribute to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane) and working in theatre and stand-up comedy. Cushing drew much praise for his performance in this production, although he always felt that his performance in the existing version of the play – it was performed twice in one week and only the second version survives in the archives – was inferior to the first.