MICHAEL GAMBON plays Hogwarts' wise headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
     Gambon started his career with the Edwards/MacLiammoir Gate Theatre in Dublin in 1963. He was one of the original members of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic under Lawrence Olivier and appeared in many plays before leaving to join Birmingham rep where he played Othello.
     Film fans will know him for his starring role in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover, as well as more recently The Gambler, Dancing at Lughnasa, Plunket and McLeane, The Last September, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, High Heels Low Lifes, Charlotte Gray, Robert Altman's Gosford Park, John Frankenheimer's Path to War, Conor McPherson's The Actors, Mike Nichol's Angels in America and Kevin Costner's Open Range.
     Perhaps Gambon's most memorable role was in the television series of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective which won him Best Actor awards from BAFTA, the Broadcasting Press Guild and the Royal Television Society. He also starred in the BBC's Wives and Daughters and Charles Sturridge's acclaimed Longitude and most recently Stephen Poliakoff's A Family Tree.
     Gambon's many theatre credits are almost too numerous to mention but include: the title roles in Macbeth, Coriolanus and Othello, Simon Gray's Otherwise Engaged, Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests, Just Between Ourselves and Man of the Moment, opposite Ralph Richardson in Alice's Boys, Harold Pinter's Old Times, the title role in Uncle Vanya and Veteran's Day with Jack Lemmon.