Latest news with #RobbieColtrane
The Guardian
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Post your questions for Eric Idle
What's your enduring image of Eric Idle? Is it him cheerily singing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from a crucifix? Nudge-nudge, wink-winking Terry Jones down the pub? Or struggling with his habit alongside Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run? Now 82, Idle is one of the most beloved comedians Britain has produced, an alumni of Cambridge Footlights, Monty Python and the Rutles, who became perhaps the most Americanised of the troupe after moving there permanently in the 1970s. Post-Python he was in films including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Splitting Heirs (1993), Casper (1995), The Wind in the Willows (1996), An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997), Ella Enchanted (2004) and Shrek the Third (2007). In 2005, Spamalot, his musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, debuted on Broadway to enormous critical and commercial success, adding Tonys and Grammys to Idle's already busy mantelpiece. A vocal critic of the current US administration on X, Idle is returning to the UK for a tour in September – his first for 52 years. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Live! is a nostalgic one-man musical including 'comedy, music, philosophy and one fart joke'. Idle was born in South Shields in 1943, and raised largely by his grandmother, after his mother fell into a depression following the death of her husband, who was killed in a road traffic accident while hitchhiking home after the second world war in 1945. Idle went to a tough boarding school in Wolverhampton aged seven, where he was unhappy but became head boy and got into Cambridge. As 1965 Footlights President, he was the first to allow women into the club, and became the Pythons' musical specialist and also its only solo writer – John Cleese and Graham Chapman preferring to pair up, alongside Jones and Michael Palin. Their comedy series Flying Circus ran for five years until 1974, while the films (Holy Grail, Life of Brian and Meaning of Life) extended the run until 1983. Idle's affectionate Beatles parody, the Rutles, was a huge success in the US, where Idle was also a frequent host of Saturday Night Live. Other projects included voice work on the likes of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a staged reading of his play What About Dick?, the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, US tours, assorted Gilbert and Sullivan productions, and season eight of The Masked Singer (as Hedgehog). Idle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019 and has since made a full recovery. He has an asteroid named in his honour – and has fronted shows alongside the scientist Brian Cox – and objects to the term 'atheist' as it suggests there may be a God not to believe in. In 2022, he spoke to the Guardian's Simon Hattenstone about his relationship with the surviving Pythons, as well as the deaths of his great friends George Harrison and Robin Williams and his concerns about the prospect of Donald Trump's re-election. 'We've gone back to the time of the dictators,' he said. 'You need to have presidential candidates subject to psychological testing. 'You're an insane narcissist; you have no business being in charge of a teapot.' They are undiagnosed monsters, that's the problem.' Send us your questions for Idle by 20 June and we'll publish his answers – alongside responses by some famous friends and colleagues – on 11 July.
BBC News
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'You have to do your own thing' - Nick Frost on becoming Hagrid
Nick Frost has said you need to "do your own thing" when taking on a much-loved role and not worry too much what people think. The actor, who has just been cast as Hagrid in the new Harry Potter series, was speaking to Newsround about his latest role as Gobber, the blacksmith in How to Train Your Dragon. Both projects have previously been made into films, so how does it feel taking on a role which another actor has played? 'Be respectful' of their work Nick Frost is very familiar with the work of the actors who played Gobber and Hagrid before the animated version of How to Train Your Dragon (2010) Gobber the Belch is voiced by Craig Hagrid in the Harry Potter films was played by Robbie Coltrane "so amazingly".Nick says you have to be "respectful" of what they have done before, but also "try and forget do your own thing". As both Harry Potter and How to Train your Dragon are already based on a hugely popular books, any casting is going to create conversation amongst fans. Nick told Newsround you can't worry too much about what people think."I think just try and enjoy it as much as you can and bring something new to the part," he said. You would think if you were the actor who played the character in the original film it would be Nick Frost's co-star in How to Train Your Dragon, Gerard Butler, says there is still pressure. The actor played Stoick, Hiccup's dad in the 2010 animation and was cast again as the viking for the live-action film. He told Newsround there is pressure to try says cast and crew wanted to make the live-action version "so special" that "those people who loved the animated movies would then say 'oh now I get it'". Fans can see Nick as Gobber in How to Train Your Dragon in cinemas now, but will have to wait until 2026 or 2027 before HBO Max's Harry Potter series is released. But perhaps Nick himself gave us a clue as to what his Hagrid will be like. Newsround presspacker Devon wanted to know how the actor makes the characters he plays so funny. The answer? He tries not to be funny."Never try and be funny. Always try and be serious and I think that way people believe it a bit more."
News.com.au
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Nick Frost on How To Train Your Dragon, Harry Potter reboot and his special link to Robbie Coltrane
Less than a month out from the start of filming for the rebooted Harry Potter series and new Hagrid Nick Frost says he's already impressed the people he most wanted to impress. The UK actor, currently starring in the live action remake of How To Train Your Dragon, is taking the role over from the late Robbie Coltrane, who played the part of the kindly bearded giant in the eight Harry Potter films that were released between 2001 and 2011. Though he never met him in person, Frost says he was a huge fan of Coltrane growing up in the 1970s and 1980s – and apparently the feeling was mutual. 'I loved the fact he was massive and angry and that's how he began, as a kind of people's poet in a way,' says Frost over Zoom call from London. 'And I love that working-class element he brought to everything he did. I had never met him, but my best friend Danny knows his family very well. 'And apparently his kids phoned my mate Danny to say 'We are so happy that Nick got the role of Hagrid and that Dad was a really big fan of his'. So that to me kind of closes a book in terms of 'my job is done' because I feel like they're the only people I had to really impress.' Frost joins established actors including John Lithgow (Professor Dumbledore), Janet McTeer (Professor McGonagall) and Johnny Flynn (Lucius Malfoy) in the hugely anticipated Max series – as well newcomers Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Staunton and Alastair Stout, who play Harry, Hermione and Ron – and he says he's 'excited' to finally get started. 'We're like a month out from shooting and – being a fan and being a massive fan of fantasy – getting to go into a place where they are designing wands and the Sorting Hat and here's some owls, it's like 'this is amazing',' he says. 'It's just not lost on me and every time I go in and see a tiny bit more development being done and it's just amazing.' With last year's role voicing a droid in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, his current role as Gobber in How To Train Your Dragon and Harry Potter to come, Frost says 'there's not a theme park alive that I couldn't just bowl on into free of charge'. Frost says he based his role of Gobber, voiced by Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson in the three hit animated films, on hardman British actor Ray Winstone – not that he knows it. 'I haven't told Ray that,' he says with a laugh. 'I'll let him see the film first and see if he likes it. If he likes it, I'll say, 'I based it on you, Ray'.' Playing the one-legged, one-armed trainer of dragon-fighters also involved a touch of method acting for Frost. He was just about to go in for surgery on his bad knee, but director Dean De Blois told him to hold off until shooting had wrapped so he could hobble around for real on his peg leg. 'The arm was great,' Frost adds. 'Every day they they'd knock on the trailer and there'd be an array of five different hands and they're like 'well, what do you fancy for the day?' There was a beer mug and a massive axe or a stone lump or a hammer and it was great getting to pick what I wanted each day.'
News.com.au
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Nick Frost on How To Train Your Dragon and playing Hagrid in the Harry Potter reboot
Nick Frost talks to film writer James Wigney about How To Train Your Dragon, playing Hagrid in the Harry Potter reboot and the late, great Robbie Coltrane.
News.com.au
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Nick Frost hits out over J.K. Rowling's transgender views
The 53-year-old actor has landed a part in HBO's hotly anticipated adaptation of 59-year-old Rowling's iconic Harry Potter book series. The Shaun of the Dead star will play Rubeus Hagrid, the half-giant groundskeeper of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a part memorably played by the late Robbie Coltrane in the film series. While speaking to The Observer, Frost signalled that he does not share Rowling's views on transgender rights after the author took a stand in defence of women's rights that lead to a clash with equal rights campaigners.
