Actor Robbie Coltrane, who played Harry Potter's Hagrid, dies at age 72
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,
Coltrane's agent Belinda Wright said he died Friday at a hospital in his native Scotland, and but 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 began pursuing an acting career and renamed himself in honor of jazz musician John Coltrane.
He already had a notable screen career, with credits including "Mona Lisa," "Nuns on the Run" and Kenneth Branagh's
adaptation of "Henry V" when he broke through on his own as a hard-bitten detective in "Cracker," the 1990s TV series
for which he won the best actor at the British Academy Television Awards three years running.