Paul Ritter, an accomplished actor who appeared in massive film franchises such as “Harry Potter” and the James Bond series before a prominent role in the Emmy-winning “Chernobyl,” has died at age 54.
The British star died after a battle with a brain tumor, his agent told Variety.
“It is with great sadness we can confirm that Paul Ritter passed away last night,” the agent told the outlet in a report published early Tuesday. “He died peacefully at home with his wife Polly and sons Frank and Noah by his side.”
Ritter racked up dozens of acting credits between movies, TV shows and stage productions during a career that began with mostly television roles in the early 1990s.
Ritter appeared in numerous Hollywood productions during the 2000s, including portraying a member of the enigmatic Quantum group in the 2008 Bond movie “Quantum Solace,” which stars Daniel Craig as 007.
The following year, Ritter played a wizard named Eldred Worple in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which is the sixth movie in the series.
In 2009, Ritter also appeared in “Nowhere Boy,” a film directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson that centers on John Lennon’s early life.
Ritter received a Tony nomination in 2009 as well for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play for the Broadway production of “The Norman Conquests.”
“Paul was an exceptionally talented actor playing an enormous variety of roles on stage and screen with extraordinary skill,” his agent told Variety. “He was fiercely intelligent, kind and very funny. We will miss him greatly.”
More recently, Ritter starred as the father of the main family in the British sitcom “Friday Night Dinner,” and as the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s chief deputy engineer in HBO’s “Chernobyl,” which won the Emmy for outstanding limited series in 2019.
