Michael Gambon

Jasper Rees is an arts journalist and author who has written for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and theartsdesk.com, which he co-founded. His previous books include I Found My Horn and Bred of Heaven, both of which were abridged for Radio 4, and a biography of Florence Foster Jenkins. In 2020, Rees published Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, which was written with the full cooperation of her family, friends and colleagues, and became a Sunday Times bestseller. He has also edited Victoria Wood Unseen on TV: Sketches, Songs, Stand-up and Other Rarities, and wrote and presented ‘Loose Chippings’, an episode of Archive on 4 featuring unheard audio from Victoria Wood’s archive.

About Sir Michael Gambon

Michael Gambon, born in Dublin in 1940, began acting in amateur theatre before joining Laurence Olivier’s newly launched National Theatre in 1963. His first television lead was in The Borderers in 1968, while theatrical success came in The Norman Conquests in 1974, which inaugurated a long collaboration with Alan Ayckbourn. The first of many appearances in the work of Harold Pinter came in Betrayal in 1978. The Life of Galileo in 1980 established him as a theatrical heavyweight and the great performances followed: King Lear, A View from the Bridge, Volpone, David Hare’s Skylight. His face was truly launched on television in Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective in 1986. He went on to star in Maigret, then for three successive years won BAFTAs for his performances in Wives and Daughters, Longitude and Stephen Poliakoff’s Perfect Strangers. In cinema, he had his first lead role in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Belated recognition from Hollywood came with a scene-stealing cameo in Michael Mann’s The Insider, which led on to Gosford Park and the role of Dumbledore, bringing a new generation of fans. The final phase of his stage career brought major performances in the plays of Samuel Beckett. His last lead role on screen was in Churchill’s Secret in 2016. Michael Gambon was made a CBE in 1990 and knighted in 1998. He died in 2023.