The Goblet of Fire director remembers a kind collaborator, a wonderfully authoritative character actor and a true eccentric
Robbie Coltrane stuck in our hearts because he could play the best of us and the worst. I worked with him on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where he played Hagrid, the clumsy simpleton of a giant who was always concerned for the good of the children and brought his own big buttery optimistic grin to the character.
He was utterly sweet to the Harry Potter kids, just one of the things that was so endearing about him. You have to remember those kids started off in Potter at nine and 10, they were very little, and would have been very discombobulated by the whole process. He took that on board and actually made the getting of their performances part of his own work, by virtue of how kind he was to them, and how he pointed out to them how they should look in this direction and not that, and so forth.
