An authorized biography of Michael Gambon, penned by Jasper Rees and released three years after the actor’s passing, offers more than just a retrospective of his acclaimed roles in works by Shakespeare, Beckett, and Pinter. While the book documents his iconic performances in The Singing Detective and the Harry Potter series, it also dedicates considerable space to his enduring reputation as a dedicated prankster. Beyond notes on his famously large hands and feet, the biography captures the actor’s extensive history of tomfoolery. Not every actor’s biography includes “fart machines” in the index but toots fake and real are let off in several chapters. Rees likens it to Gambon taking on what is often referred to as an “actor’s Everest” only to find another climber “clambering frantically up the same rope”.
Gambon’s ability to disrupt scenes was legendary among his peers. During a National Theatre production of David Hare’s Skylight, co-star Lia Williams found it impossible to maintain composure when Gambon experimented with bizarre accents and speaking in tongues. Williams described the experience as a form of “hell on Earth,” noting, “One time I laughed so hard that my Tampax fell out and I had to deal with that for an entire act.” Similarly, during an 80s BBC adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts, Gambon turned a somber dinner scene into a disaster. During a tense sequence involving Natasha Richardson, Kenneth Branagh, and Judi Dench, Gambon suddenly requested “the usual eight” potatoes, leaving his co-stars unable to finish the scene. David Hare’s 1995 play Skylight is set in a draughty flat where a dish of spaghetti is cooked up on stage. According to gambon would adopt a different accent or speak in tongues during a scene and “when he made me laugh it was hell on Earth because there was nothing I could do about it”, Williams, who called him “one of the funniest p. Ibsen’s Ghosts was a hot potato when it was first staged in 1882 thanks to its scandalous plot involving syphilis and incest. Those kitchen cupboards proved useful for Lia Williams to hide when Gambon’s goofing got to her at the National Theatre. Gambon had some fun with the spuds when playing the self-righteous Pastor Manders in an 80s BBC TV version. His co-stars’ corpsing led them to leave the set. “We couldn’t control ourselves at all,” confessed Dench. The poster presented them as a sort of double act and Sher was widely seen as stealing the limelight.
His mischief extended to the cinema as well. While filming Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he and Alan Rickman conspired to hide a fart machine near Daniel Radcliffe. While the young actor was initially frustrated by the disruption during a serious close-up, he later conceded that the stunt was undeniably funny. Gambon’s pranks could be more aggressive, however; during a 1982 RSC production of King Lear, he famously mocked his co-star Antony Sher, who played the Fool, by bellowing, “Come on out, you little red-nosed fucker!” during the play’s climax. According to adrian Noble, who directed the tragedy,, Gambon “joshed [Sher] mercilessly”. According to when Gambon took over the role of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he and Alan Rickman pranked Daniel Radcliffe by triggering a fart machine during a closeup of the young star when he was in a sleeping bag alongside fellow Hogwarts students. “I was initially really annoyed,”, Radcliffe, before concluding that if Rickman and Gambon had engineered it then “that is pretty funny”.
Other incidents highlighted his eccentric nature. In his dressing room during a production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, Gambon kept a forged photograph signed by Robert De Niro, complete with a faked note of admiration that he had written himself. During a late-60s Christmas show at the Birmingham Rep, he even defied artistic director Peter Dews by writing “fuck” and “off” on his eyelids, blinking them at his co-star Anthony Higgins during the performance. The pair would appear together in the film The Good Shepherd in 2006 but had never even met by the time he was doing A View from the Bridge. You’re great – love Bobby” – were apparently written by Gambon himself, the fake autograph and note – “I loved working with you Mike. Gambon blinked each eye to deliver the message to Higgins.
His commitment to his craft—and his humor—remained consistent throughout his career. In a 2000 revival of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, he famously hid chocolate cake in his trousers during a performance, sniffing his own fingers to elicit uncontrollable laughter from co-stars Douglas Hodge and Rupert Graves. Even in his later years, Gambon delighted in spinning elaborate lies for the press. He once told a journalist an intricate story about how he and Helen Mirren prepared for Antony and Cleopatra by miming the cooking of ham and eggs. Mirren later dismissed the story as “absolute rubbish,” though she fondly acknowledged that it was a “lovely story.” Causing his co-stars to crack up. “Rupert was in terrible trouble,” remembered Hodge. “Rupert wet himself regularly.”, he withdrew his smeared fingers and sniffed them.
