Tony Award Winner Richard Griffiths, Best-Known for the Harry Potter Films and Broadway's History Boys, Has Died

Born on July 31, 1947 in Thornaby-on-Tees, England, Griffiths was the son of deaf parents who used sign language for communication. Upon graduating from the Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama, he began working on BBC Radio as well as acting and managing at several small theaters. Early in his career, he performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the comic roles of the Constable in The Comedy of Errors and Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, among others. These led to screen roles in BBC television serial dramas such as Bird of Prey, and in films including The French Lieutenant's Woman and Chariots of Fire.

Griffiths was last seen on Broadway as the conflicted Dr. Martin Dysart starring opposite Daniel Radcliffe in Thea Sharrock's 2008 revival of Peter Shaffer's Equus, a production that transferred from London. Griffiths made his Broadway debut in 2006 when The History Boys, directed by Nicholas Hytner, moved to Broadway after an acclaimed run at London's Royal National Theatre. For his performance in that play, Griffiths received not only a Tony and an Olivier, but also Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 2009, Griffiths starred as the writer W.H. Auden in Bennett's The Habit of Art, also directed by Hytner at the National.

He last appeared on the London stage in 2012, when he and Danny DeVito starred as a pair of vaudevillians in Sharrock's revival of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. The pair was set to reunite for the revival's American debut at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in September 2013.

Griffiths, who was appointed as an Order of the British Empire in 2008, is survived by his wife, Heather Gibson, whom he met while performing in a 1973 production of Lady Windermere's Fan.