Richard Griffiths (31 July 1947 – 28 March 2013)

LONDON (AP) – Richard Griffiths, the versatile British actor who played
the boy wizard’s unsympathetic Uncle Vernon in the “Harry Potter” movies,
has died.

Agent Simon Beresford announced Friday that Griffiths died a day earlier
of complications following heart surgery at University Hospital in Coventry,
central England.

He paid tribute to Griffiths as “a remarkable man and one of our greatest
and best-loved actors.”

Griffiths appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, but will be most widely remembered as a pair of contrasting uncles — the hero’s grudging Muggle
guardian in the “Harry Potter” series, and flamboyant Uncle Monty in 1980s
cult classic “Withnail and I.”

“I was proud to say I knew him,” said “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe.