Part of Harry Potter featuring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Alan Rickman, and Maggie Smith.
Rise to Fame
He left school at 15 without a qualification and spent his early twenties as a toolmaker at Vickers-Armstrongs. The pivot to acting started with a forged CV; he fabricated his entire stage history to land a role at Dublin's Gate Theatre in 1962. That brazen move got him in a room with Laurence Olivier the following year, who liked what he saw and brought him into the National Theatre's founding company. The real breakthrough came decades later: Philip Marlow in BBC's The Singing Detective (1986), a performance that won him a BAFTA and made casting directors forget he'd ever made tools for a living.
In the Spotlight
For most audiences, he'll forever be the second Dumbledore. Richard Harris died ten days after warning the director he'd be killed if recast. Christopher Lee passed. Ian McKellen passed. Gambon got a phone call, said 'sure,' and never read a single Harry Potter book. His stated approach: 'I just play him as myself... I stick a beard on and play me.' The result was a more volatile, impulsive Dumbledore that half the fandom resented for years. It didn't matter. He played the role through six films and outlasted the debate.
Side Notes
The antique gun collection ran to over 800 pieces, which he sourced, engraved, and maintained himself. He once drove the Top Gear test track on two wheels, so dramatically that they named the corner after him. For years, he kept a signed Robert De Niro photo in his dressing room that he'd written himself. Then De Niro actually cast him in The Good Shepherd (2006), which made the forgery retroactively almost reasonable. He had a son, Tom, born in 2007, making him a father at around 66, right in the middle of the Dumbledore years.
Final Chapter
He died on September 27, 2023, of pneumonia, survived by wife Lady Anne Gambon and son Fergus. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint all issued tributes within hours. J.K. Rowling said she'd first seen him in King Lear in 1982 and called him 'a wonderful man.' Fans gathered at Universal Orlando's Wizarding World and raised their wands toward the sky, mirroring the in-universe tribute.