‘We think you’re the best’ – the actors’ tribute to Michael Gambon
From our UK edition
When Michael Gambon was made a CBE, Ian McKellen wrote generously on behalf of the acting profession: ‘We think you’re the best.’ Arthur Miller pronounced him greater than Laurence Olivier. From a spear-carrying start in the early days – indeed on the first day – of the National Theatre, Gambon rose steadily to stardom and eventually, via a series of movie flops, to the well-paid prison of the Harry Potter films. On stage, in Shakespeare, Beckett, Pinter and Ayckbourn, or on television in The Singing Detective and Longitude, there was a might and scale to his talent that few could match – a force that did not preclude delicacy and emotional truth, his physical bulk capable of both high comedy and balletic grace. The essence of Gambon’s art was contradiction.
