Michael Byrne, the veteran British actor and theater star who played a Nazi in… Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade And the wizard Gellert Grindelwald Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1He died on June 20, The Guardian I mentioned. He was 82 years old.
The blue-eyed Byrne was also unforgettable as a soldier who attempted to rape the wife of William Wallace, played by Mel Gibson in brave heart (1995) and as a concentration camp survivor who helps bring down Nazi war criminal Ian McKellen in Bryan Singer’s film. Suitable student (1998).
His film resume includes Mike Newell’s Good Father (1985), Roger Spottiswoode Tomorrow never dies (1997), Philip Noyce Saint (1997), Martin Scorsese Gangs of New York (2002), Phil Alden Robinson The sum of all fears (2002) and Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet (2012).
Byrne played the ruthless Colonel Vogel in Steven Spielberg’s film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), the elderly Grindelwald, a dark wizard who was defeated in a duel with Dumbledore, played by Michael Gambon, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010).
Byrne was born in Hampstead, north London, on 7 November 1943, and appeared alongside the likes of Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith and Robert Stevens in National Theater Company productions in the 1960s.
In 1971, he starred in the West End film with Alan Bates Potlidirected by Harold Pinter, and the trio were reunited in the 1974 film version.
The 1970s also saw him appear in several war films, including John Sturges’s. The eagle has landed (1976), Richard Attenborough A bridge too far (1977) and J. Hamilton Power 10 of Navarone (1978).
His more recent theater roles include a 2010 role as Romeo opposite Sian Phillips as Juliet at the Bristol Old Vic. For television, he starred from 2008 to 2010 as Ted Page, the long-lost ex-lover of Sue Nicholls’ Audrey Roberts and father of Helen Worth’s Jill Platt, in an ITV soap opera. Coronation Street.
Survivors include his wife, actress Carol Nimmons, whom he married in 1965; Their daughters Tara and Briony and grandchildren Tom, Chloe and Jasmine.
