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Stage and screen actor best known for his roles in the TV comedy Friday Night Dinner and the miniseries Chernobyl
The brilliant character actor Paul Ritter, who has died of a brain tumour aged 54, came to the notice of wide audiences only later in his career – as the long-haired wizard and would-be biographer Eldred Worple in the sixth of the Harry Potter film series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009); as the villainous power plant worker Anatoly Dyatlov in the chilling HBO/Sky miniseries Chernobyl (2019); and, from 2011 onwards, as the combustible, inexplicably shirtless Martin Goodman in Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner (“lovely bit of squirrel,” moving fork to mouth) with Tamsin Greig.
In all three roles he was never recognisable as whoever he really was. For Ritter was an actor who “disappeared” inside his character. He always seemed to be patiently volcanic and, on the other hand, anonymously scrofulous. When he was on stage – and he appeared often with the RSC and the National Theatre, especially – I tried, and failed, to pin down his identity. Continue reading...