The legendary Michael Gambon has passed away at age 81. He has been Helen Mirren’s leading man in three iconclastic productions: 1983’s “Antony and Cleopatra” with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the unforgettable thief in Peter Greenaway’s masterpiece “The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover” as well as Helen’s secret lover and eventual murder victim in the Oscar-winning “Gosford Park”. On the day of Mr. Gambon’s passing, Helen Mirren was promoting “Golda” in the United Kingdom, during which she remembered her colleague in an interview with the BBC.

I’m going to smile when I think about Michael, because he was incredibly funny. He had this natural Irish sense of humor. Naughty, but very, very funny. He was enormously self deprecating but at the same time and instinctive actor and a wonderful person to be around, just in general. He kept me constantly in laughter. We had some incredibly funny moments playing “Antony and Cleopatra” together. But, an extraordinary actor. An extraordinary contribution to the British landscape of theatre. An enormously important past within that landscape, and we will all miss him a lot (Helen Mirren, BBC, September 28, 2023).

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