Stars pay tribute after death of actor Paul Ritter
TRIBUTES HAVE been paid to Friday Night Dinner and Chernobyl star Paul Ritter following his death aged 54.
Ritter, who also notched up credits in Vera, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Wolf Hall and James Bond film Quantum of Solace, had been suffering from a brain tumour.
Actors paid tribute to the star, best known for his role as eccentric father Martin Goodman in Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner. Writer Robert Popper, who created the muchloved sitcom, said he was “devastated”.
“Paul was a lovely, wonderful human being. Kind, funny, super caring and the greatest actor I ever worked with,” Popper wrote on
Twitter.
Vera star Brenda Blethyn wrote that Ritter was “the very finest of actors and a gentleman”.
Actor Stephen Mangan said he was “trying to find a way to talk about Paul Ritter and struggling.
“My friend since we were students together. So much talent and it shone from him even as a teenager,” Mangan tweeted.
Actor Rob Delaney wrote of Ritter’s performance as nuclear engineer Anatoly Dyatlov.
“Knocked it out of the PARK in Chernobyl,” he tweeted. “Watching it I consciously thought, ‘Oh, we have a new movie star.’
“Between that and how funny he was in Friday Night Dinner... just unreal talent.”
A statement announcing the actor’s death said: “It is with great sadness we can confirm that Paul Ritter passed away last night.
“He died peacefully at home with his wife Polly and sons Frank and Noah by his side.”
As the shirtless family patriarch in Channel 4’s Friday Night Dinner, he starred alongside Tamsin Greig and Simon Bird. However his role as the callous and inept engineer Dyatlov in Chernobyl was in complete contrast and demonstrated his enormous range. He also played Eldred Worple in Harry Potter and the HalfBlood Prince.
Other notable roles were as Guy Haines in James Bond film Quantum of Solace , in period drama Belgravia, as Billy Cartwright in Vera and Sir John Seymour in Wolf Hall.
Born in 1966, Ritter made his TV debut in an episode of The Bill in 1992 and became an acclaimed stage actor, working with the National Theatre in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, All My Sons, Coram Boy, The Hot-House, and as John Major in The Audience opposite Dame Helen Mirren as the Queen. He also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company.