Today, The Grandma has been reading about Toleranzpatent or the Patent of Toleration, the edict of toleration issued on a day like today in 1781 by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II.
The Patent of Toleration, in German Toleranzpatent, was an edict of toleration issued on 13 October 1781by the Habsburg emperor Joseph II.
Part of the Josephinist reforms, the Patent extended religious freedom to non-Catholic Christians living in the crown lands of the Habsburg monarchy, including Lutherans, Calvinists, and the Eastern Orthodox. Specifically, these members of minority faiths were now legally permitted to hold private religious exercises in clandestine churches.
For the first time after the Counter-Reformation, the Patent guaranteed the practice of religion by the Evangelical Lutheran and the Reformed Church in Austria. Nevertheless, worship was heavily regulated, wedding ceremonies remained reserved for the Catholic Church, and the Unity of the Brethren was still suppressed.
Similar to the articular churches admitted 100 years before, Protestants were only allowed to erect houses of prayer (Bethäuser) which should not in any way resemble church buildings.
In many Habsburg areas, especially in the hereditary lands of Upper Austria, Styria and Carinthia, Protestant parishes quickly developed, strongly relying on crypto-protestant traditions.
The Patent also regulated mixed faith marriages, foreshadowing the Marriage Patent that was to be released in 1783 seeking to bring marriages under civil rather than canon law. In allowing marriages between religions, if the father was Catholic all children were required to be raised as Catholics whilst if the mother was Catholic only the daughters had to be raised as such.
The Patent was followed by the Edict of Tolerance for Jews in 1782. The edict extended to Jews the freedom to pursue all branches of commerce, but also imposed new requirements.
Jews were required to create German-language primary schools or send their children to Christian schools. Jewish schools had previously taught children to read and write Hebrew in addition to mathematics.
The Patent also permitted Jews to attend state secondary schools. A series of laws issued soon after the Edict of Toleration abolished the autonomy of the Jewish communities, which had previously run their own court, charity, internal taxation and school systems; required Jews to acquire family names; made Jews subject to military conscription; and required candidates for the rabbinate to have secular education.
The 1781 Patent was originally called the Divine Send of Equal Liberties but was further put down by the monarch's advisor. Constraints on the construction of churches were abolished after the revolutions of 1848.
The Protestant Church did not receive an equivalent legal status until Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria issued the Protestantenpatent in 1861.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -that is the first law of nature.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about John Lithgow, the American actor who was born on a day like today in 1945.
John Arthur Lithgow (October 19, 1945) is an American actor.
Lithgow studied at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before becoming known for his work on the stage and screen.
He has been the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, six Primetime Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Tony Awards. He has also received nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and four Grammy Awards.
Lithgow has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
In 1972, Lithgow made his film debut in Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues.
In 1973, Lithgow made his Broadway debut in The Changing Room for which he received his first Tony Award.
In 1976, Lithgow acted alongside Meryl Streep in the plays 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, A Memory of Two Mondays and Secret Service at The Public Theatre. He received Tony Award nominations for Requiem for a Heavyweight (1985), M. Butterfly (1988), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005).
In 2002, Lithgow received his second Tony Award, this time for a musical, The Sweet Smell of Success.
In 2007, he made his Royal Shakespeare Company debut as Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He returned to Broadway in the plays The Columnist (2012), A Delicate Balance (2014), and Hillary and Clinton (2019).
Lithgow starred as Dick Solomon in the television sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001) winning three Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance. He also played Arthur Mitchell in the drama Dexter (2009) for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama.
In 2004, Lithgow played Blake Edwards in the HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. He has also appeared on 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, and Louie. Lithgow portrayed Winston Churchill in the Netflix drama The Crown (2016–2019) receiving a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He starred in HBO's Perry Mason (2020) and FX's The Old Man (2022).
Last, he is famous for his film roles. His early screen roles included Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981). He received Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nominations for his breakout performance in The World According to Garp (1982) and his role in Terms of Endearment (1983).
He then starred in the films Footloose (1984), Harry and the Hendersons (1987), The Pelican Brief and Cliffhanger (1993), A Civil Action (1998), Rugrats in Paris: The Movie (2000), Shrek (2001), Kinsey (2004), Dreamgirls (2006), Love Is Strange (2014), Miss Sloane (2016), Beatriz at Dinner (2017), Late Night, and Bombshell (both 2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2022).
Lithgow was born on October 19, 1945, in Rochester, New York. His mother, Sarah Jane Lithgow (1917-2012), was a retired actress. His father, Arthur Washington Lithgow III (1915-2004) was a theatrical producer and director who ran McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. His father was born in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, to a European-American family; his great-grandfather was a vice consul and vice commercial agent in the country. He is the third of four children and has three siblings: an older brother David Lithgow, an older sister Robin Lithgow, and a younger sister Sarah Jane Boaker.
On the show Finding Your Roots, Lithgow discovered that he is a descendant of eight Mayflower passengers, including colonial governor William Bradford. Because of his father's job, the family moved frequently during Lithgow's childhood. He spent his childhood years in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where activist Coretta Scott King was his babysitter. He spent his teenage years in Akron (living at Stan Hywet Hall) and Lakewood, Ohio.
Lithgow graduated from Princeton High School in 1963. He then studied history and English literature at Harvard College. Lithgow lived in Adams House as an undergraduate and later served on Harvard's Board of Overseers. He credits a performance at Harvard of Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia Limited with helping him decide to become an actor. He was a pupil of dramatist Robert Chapman who was the director of Harvard's Loeb Drama Center.
Lithgow graduated from Harvard in 1967 with an A.B. magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After he graduated, Lithgow won a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Also after graduation, he served as the Director of the Arts and Literature Department at WBAI, the Pacifica radio station in New York City.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about budgies,this species so wonderful that conquers your heart and your soul immediately, and becomes a great companion.
The budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulatus,also known as the common parakeet or shell parakeet, is a small, long-tailed, seed-eating parrot usually nicknamed the budgie or in American English, the parakeet.
Budgies are the only species in the genus Melopsittacus. Naturally, the species is green and yellow with black, scalloped markings on the nape, back, and wings.
Budgies are bred in captivity with colouring of blues, whites, yellows, greys, and even with small crests. Juveniles and chicks are monomorphic, while adults are told apart by their cere colouring, and their behaviour.
The species is the only member of the genus Melopsittacus, which is the only genus in the Melopsittacini tribe.
The origin of the budgerigar's name is unclear. First recorded in 1805, budgerigars are popular pets around the world due to their small size, low cost, and ability to mimic human speech. They are likely the third most popular pet in the world, after the domesticated dog and cat.
Budgies are nomadic flock parakeets that have been bred in captivity since the 19th century. In both captivity and the wild, budgerigars breed opportunistically and in pairs.
They are found wild throughout the drier parts of Australia, where they have survived harsh inland conditions for over five million years. Their success can be attributed to a nomadic lifestyle and their ability to breed while on the move. The budgerigar is closely related to lories and the fig parrots.
Several possible origins for the name budgerigar have been proposed. First, budgerigar may be a mispronunciation or alteration of the Gamilaraay word gidjirrigaa or gijirragaa from the Yuwaalaraay. Second, budgerigar might be a modified form of budgery or boojery (Australian English slang for good) and gar (cockatoo). While many references mention good as part of the meaning, and a few specify good bird, it is quite possible that reports by those local to the region are more accurate in specifying the direct translation as good food.
Alternative spellings include budgerygah and betcherrygah, the latter used by indigenous people of the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales.
Alternative names for the budgerigar include the shell parrot or shell parakeet, the warbling grass parakeet, the canary parrot, the zebra parrot, the flight bird, and the scallop parrot. Although more often used as a common name for small parrots in the genus Agapornis, the name lovebird has been used for budgerigars, because of their habit of close perching and mutual preening, and their long term pair-bonds.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Dmitry Kholodov, the journalist who was assassinated on a day like today in 1994.
Dmitry Yuryevich Kholodov, in Russian Дми́трий Ю́рьевич Хо́лодов (21 July 1967-17 October 1994) was a Russian journalist who investigated corruption in the military and was assassinated on 17 October 1994 in Moscow.
Kholodov was born in Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad) on 21 June 1967. He studied physics.
Kholodov began his working life alongside his parents at the defence industry institute in Klimovsk in the Moscow Region. Faced by limited career prospects he turned to journalism, first working for the local radio.
In 1992, he became a reporter with the national Moskovsky Komsomolets daily newspaper.
In 1993, Kholodov travelled to hotspots around the former Soviet Union, reporting for Moskovsky Komsomolets. In particular, he was in Abkhazia during the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict and, as he witnessed the ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazia, sent many detailed reports, including one entitled Sukhumi apocalypse.
In October 1993, Kholodov interviewed Defence Minister Pavel Grachev. For the next twelve months, on the basis of leaks from army and Ministry of Defence sources, he wrote and published numerous articles about high-level corruption in the military, especially concerning the misuse of funds intended to ease the withdrawal and resettlement of half a million former Soviet troops and their families who had been based in East Germany.
Kholodov was due to speak at Duma hearings into these allegations, which supposedly reached as high as the defence minister himself, when he was murdered. None of the allegations were ever tested in court. Grachev was replaced as Defence Minister in 1996 after the end of the First Chechen War.
Kholodov died on 17 October 1994 when he opened a booby-trapped briefcase in his newspaper's offices. He had picked up the case that morning from the left-luggage section at a Moscow train station after being told it contained documents exposing corruption in the armed forces.
The editors of Kholodov's daily, Moskovsky Komsomolets, accused the Russian military leadership (Defence Minister Grachev in particular) of ordering the killing. The military denied involvement. Speaking as a witness in court some six years later, Pavel Grachev claimed that some of my subordinates misunderstood my words.
Local and foreign correspondents had already died in Moscow and elsewhere in the country, but this was the first indisputable targeting of a journalist for their work.
Kholodov's murder sent shockwaves through Russia's media community. Reaction abroad was muted, apart from professional media monitors and human rights organisations, and after December 1994 his killing was overshadowed by the onset of the First Chechen War.
Kholodov's violent death personalized the risk faced by reporters in Russia, and the long drawn-out investigation and subsequent failure to convict the suspects had a chilling effect on investigative journalism in the country's newly free media.
The case remains unique in one aspect. With one exception (Oleg Sedinko in 2002), explosives have never again been used to kill a journalist in Russia; and unlike the ongoing spate of contract killings no evidence was presented in court that money had been paid to Kholodov's alleged killers. They were acting, apparently, to avoid the displeasure of their superiors and to advance their careers.
The trial of six defendants, four of them serving military officers, began in 2000 at the Moscow District Military Court. They were acquitted in 2002 and again, after a second trial, in 2004. On both occasions the Prosecutor General's Office protested against the verdict to the Russian Supreme Court.
Kholodov's elderly parents and their lawyers alleged improprieties in the conduct of the trial and the behaviour of the different judges presiding over the two trials, the second of whom, Yevgeny Zubov, would be in charge of the trial of Anna Politkovskaya's alleged killers. An attempt was made to have a complaint about the lack of a fair trial examined before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It was rejected on the grounds that the murder preceded Russia's full accession to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1998.
By 2004, the killing was also technically beyond the statute of limitation for murder laid down in Russia's 1960 Criminal Code. Speaking in Germany in 2008, however, President Dmitry Medvedev said that the killings of certain journalists were of such importance that there should be no time limit for the prosecution of those responsible.
Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Bibliotheca Alexandrina,theEgyptian library that was opened on a day like today in 2022.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, in Egyptian Arabic مكتبة الإسكندرية, is a major library and cultural center on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, Egypt.
It is a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria, once one of the largest libraries worldwide, which was lost in antiquity. The idea of reviving the old library dates back to 1974 when a committee set up by Alexandria University selected a plot of land for its new library.
Construction work began in 1995, and after some US$220 millions had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated on 16 October 2002.
In 2010, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world.
The library has shelf space for eight million books, with the main reading room covering 20,000 square metres. The complex also houses a conference center; specialized libraries for maps, multimedia, the blind and visually impaired, young people, and for children; four museums; four art galleries for temporary exhibitions; 15 permanent exhibitions; a planetarium; and a manuscript restoration laboratory.
The idea of reviving the old library dates back to 1974 when a committee set up by Alexandria University selected a plot of land for its new library between the campus and the seafront, close to where the ancient library once stood. The recreation of the ancient library was not only adopted by other individuals and agencies, it garnered support from Egyptian politicians.
One leading supporter of the project was former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; UNESCO was also quick to embrace the concept of endowing the Mediterranean region with a center of cultural and scientific excellence. This initiative by the Egyptian government, UNESCO, and Alexandria University was undertaken with the aim of re-establishing Alexandria as one of the great intellectual and cultural centres of the twenty-first century.
UNESCO's involvement beginning in 1986 created a great opportunity for the project to truly be international in focus.
UNESCO organized an architectural design competition in 1988 to choose a design worthy of the site and its heritage. The competition was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, associated with Austrian architect Christoph Kapeller and Egyptian architect Ihab El Habbak, among more than 1,400 entries.
This architectural team consisted of ten members representing six countries. In addition, UNESCO created an International Commission for the BibliothecaAlexandrina which consisted of high-level representatives from 18 diverse countries and organizations. Given UNESCO’s involvement and the investment by the international community, this project achieved its mission to play an educational, cultural, and scientific role throughout the region.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is trilingual, containing books in Classical Arabic, English, and French. In 2010, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the National Library of France, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the world's sixth-largest Francophone library. The BA also is now the largest depository of French books in the Middle East and North Africa, surpassing those of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, in addition to being the main French library in Africa.
The library has shelf space for eight million books, with the main reading room covering 20,000 square metres on eleven cascading levels. The complex also houses a conference center; specialized libraries for maps, multimedia, the blind and visually impaired, young people, and for children; four museums; four art galleries for temporary exhibitions; 15 permanent exhibitions; a planetarium; and a manuscript restoration laboratory. The library's architecture is equally striking. The main reading room stands beneath a 32-meter-high glass-panelled roof, tilted out toward the sea like a sundial, and measuring some 160 m in diameter. The walls are of gray Aswan granite, carved with characters from 120 scripts.
The collections at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina were donated from all over the world. The Spanish donated documents that detailed their period of Moorish rule. The French also donated, giving the library documents dealing with the building of the Suez Canal.
Criticism of the library comes chiefly from two angles. Many allege that the library is a white elephant, unsustainable for modern Egypt, which serves little more than a vanity project for the Egyptian government. Furthermore, there are fears that censorship would affect the library's collection.
In addition, the building's elaborate architecture (which imitates a rising Sun) upset some who believed too much money was being spent on construction rather than the library's actual collection.
Due to the lack of available funds, the library had only 500,000 books in 2002, a small number compared to other national libraries. It has been estimated that it will take 80 years to fill the library at the current level of funding. The library relies heavily on donations to buy books for its collections.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Mario Puzo, the American author, screenwriter, and journalist, who was born on a day like today in 1920.
Mario Francis Puzo (October 15, 1920-July 2, 1999) was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist.
He is known for his crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and for Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film and its 1980 sequel. His final novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.
Puzo was born in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City to Italian immigrants from Pietradefusi, Province of Avellino, Campania. When Puzo was 12, his father, who worked as a trackman for the New York Central Railroad, was committed to the Pilgrim State Hospital insane asylum for schizophrenia and his wife, Maria, was left to raise their seven children. He served in the US Army Air Forces in Germany in World War II, and later graduated from the City College of New York.
In 1950, his first short story, The Last Christmas, was published in American Vanguard. After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, which was published in 1955.
In 1960, Bruce Jay Friedman hired Puzo as an assistant editor of a group of men's pulp magazines with titles such as Male, Men. Under the pen name Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for magazine True Action.
In 1969, Puzo's best-known work, The Godfather, was published. Puzo stated that this story came from research into organized crime, not from personal experience, and that he was looking to write something that would appeal to the masses. The novel remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 67 weeks and sold over nine million copies in two years. The book was later developed into the film The Godfather (1972), directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Paramount Pictures originally found out about Puzo's novel in 1967 when a literary scout for the company contacted then Paramount Vice President of Production Peter Bart about Puzo's unfinished sixty-page manuscript. The film received three awards of the 11 Oscar category nominations, including Puzo's Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Coppola and Puzo then collaborated on sequels to the original film, TheGodfather Part II (1974) and The Godfather Part III (1990). Coppola and Puzo preferred the title The Death of Michael Corleone for the third film, but Paramount Pictures found that unacceptable.
In September 2020, for the film's 30th anniversary, it was announced that a new cut of the film titled Mario Puzo'sThe Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone would have a limited theatrical release in December 2020 followed by digital and Blu-ray. Coppola said the film is the version he and Puzo had originally envisioned, and it vindicates its status among the trilogy.
In mid-1972, Puzo wrote the first draft of the script for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, but he was unable to continue work because of his prior commitment to The Godfather Part II.
Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for Richard Donner's Superman, which then also included the plot for Superman II, as they were originally written as one film. He also collaborated on the stories for the 1982 film A Time to Die and the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club.
In 1991, Puzo's speculative fiction The Fourth K was published; it centres on a fictional member of the Kennedy family dynasty who becomes President of the United States early in the 2000s.
Puzo never saw the publication of his penultimate book, Omertà, but the manuscript was finished before his death, as was the manuscript for The Family.
Today, The Grandma has received more sad news. Robbie Coltrane, the Scottish actor who played Rubeus Hagrid in Harry Potter saga has passed away.
The Grandma wants to talk about Coltrane, his career, and his unforgettable roles.
Anthony Robert McMillan (30 March 1950-14 October 2022), knownprofessionally asRobbie Coltrane, wasaScottish actor and comedian. Hegained worldwide recognition as RubeusHagrid in the Harry Potter film series (2001-2011), and as Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky in the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and The World Is Not Enough (1999).
He was appointed an OBE in the 2006 New Year Honours by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to drama.
In 1990, Coltrane received the Evening Standard British Film Award -Peter Sellers Award for Comedy.
In 2011, he was honoured for his outstanding contribution to film at the British Academy Scotland Awards.
Coltrane started his career appearing alongside Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, and Emma Thompson in the sketch series Alfresco (1983-1984).
In 1987, he starred in the BBC miniseries Tutti Frutti alongside Thompson, for which he received his first British Academy Television Award for Best Actor nomination. Coltrane then gained national prominence starring as criminal psychologist Dr. Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald in the ITV television series Cracker (1993-2006), a role which saw him receive the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in three consecutive years (1994 to 1996).
In 2006, Coltrane came eleventh in ITV's poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars, voted by the public.
In 2016 he starred in the four-part Channel 4 series National Treasure alongside Julie Walters, a role for which he received a British Academy Television Award nomination.
Coltrane appeared in two films for George Harrison's Handmade Films: the Neil Jordan neo-noir Mona Lisa (1986) with Bob Hoskins, and Nuns on the Run with Eric Idle. He also appeared in Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptation Henry V (1989), the comedy Let It Ride (1989), Roald Dahl's Danny, the Champion of the World (1989), Steven Soderbergh's crime-comedy thriller Ocean's Twelve (2004), Rian Johnson's caper film The Brothers Bloom (2008), Mike Newell's Dickens film adaptation Great Expectations (2012), and Emma Thompson's biographical film Effie Gray (2014). He was also known for his voice performances in the animated films The Tale of Despereaux (2008), and Pixar's Brave (2012).
Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan on 30 March 1950 in Rutherglen, Scotland, the son of Jean Ross Howie, a teacher and pianist, and Ian Baxter McMillan, a GP who also served as a forensic police surgeon. He had an older sister, Annie, and a younger sister, Jane.
Coltrane was the great-grandson of Scottish businessman Thomas W. Howie and the nephew of businessman Forbes Howie.
He started his education at Belmont House School in Newton Mearns before moving to Glenalmond College, an independent school in Perthshire. Though he later described his experiences there as deeply unhappy, he played for the rugby First XV, was head of the school's debating society, and won prizes for his art. He studied painting at the Glasgow School of Art.
Coltrane moved into acting in his early twenties, taking the stage name Coltrane and working in theatre and comedy. He appeared in the first theatre production of John Byrne's The Slab Boys, at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (1978). His comic skills brought him roles in The Comic Strip Presents (1982-2012) serie and the comedy sketch show Alfresco (1983-1984).
In 1984, he appeared in A Kick Up the Eighties (Series 2) and Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee, and is credited as a writer for both.
Coltrane moved into roles in films such as Flash Gordon (1980), Death Watch (1980), Balham, Gateway to the South (1981), Scrubbers (1983), Krull (1983), The Supergrass (1985), Defence of the Realm (1985), Absolute Beginners (1986), Mona Lisa (1986), and appeared as "Annabelle" in The Fruit Machine (1988).
On television, he appeared in The Young Ones, Tutti Frutti (1987), as Samuel Johnson in Blackadder the Third (1987), LWT's The Robbie Coltrane Special (1989) (which he also co-wrote), and in other stand-up and sketch comedy shows. He played the part of Falstaff in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989). He co-starred with Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run (1990) and played the Pope in The Pope Must Die (1991). He also played a would-be private detective obsessed with Humphrey Bogart in the TV film The Bogie Man (1992).
His
roles continued in the 1990s with the TV series Cracker (1993-1996,
returning in 2006 for a one-off special), in which he starred as
forensic psychologist Dr. Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald. The role won him
three BAFTA awards.
Roles
in bigger films followed: the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and The
World Is Not Enough (1999), a supporting role in From Hell (2001), as
well as half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films (2001-2011).
J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, had Coltrane at the top
of her list to play Hagrid and, when asked whom she would like to see
in the role, responded Robbie Coltrane for Hagrid in one quick breath.
Coltrane also presented a number of documentary programmes for the British ITV network based around his twin passions for travel and transportation.
Coltrane in a Cadillac (1993) saw him cross North America from Los Angeles to New York City behind the wheel of a 1951 Cadillac Series 62 coupe convertible, a journey of 6,059 km, which he completed in 32 days.
In 1997, Coltrane appeared in a series of six programmes under the title Coltrane's Planes and Automobiles, in which he extolled the virtues of the steam engine, the diesel engine, the supercharger, the V8 engine, the two-stroke engine, and the jet engine. In these programmes he dismantled and rebuilt several engines. He also single-handedly removed the engine from a Trabant car in 23 minutes.
In September 2006, Coltrane was voted No. 11 in ITV's TV's 50 Greatest Stars and sixth in a poll of 2000 adults across the UK to find the most famous Scot, behind the Loch Ness Monster, Robert Burns, Sean Connery, Robert the Bruce, and William Wallace.
In August 2007, Coltrane presented a series for ITV called B-Road Britain, in which he travelled from London to Glasgow, stopping in towns and villages along the way.
Coltrane voiced characters in several animated films, including The Tale of Despereaux (2008) Pixar's Brave (2012), as well as the title roles of Gooby and The Gruffalo (both 2009).
In 2016, Coltrane starred in National Treasure, a four-part drama in which he played a former comedian accused of historic sexual offences. He was nominated for Best Actor at the 2017 British Academy Television Awards, and won in the category at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards.
Maureen Ryan of Variety wrote that Coltrane does a masterful job of depicting every nuance of the character, whose wicked sense of humor masks a startling, and possibly intentional, lack of self-awareness.
Coltrane suffered from osteoarthritis in later life. He said he was in constant pain all day in 2016, and from 2019 on he employed a wheelchair.
On 14 October 2022, Coltrane died at Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Scotland at the age of 72.
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