Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan in Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the son of Jean Ross Howie, a teacher and pianist, and Ian Baxter McMillan, a general practitioner who also served as a forensic police surgeon. He has an older sister, Annie, and a younger sister, Jane. Coltrane is 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. From Glenalmond, Coltrane went on to Glasgow School of Art, where he was ridiculed for "having an accent like Prince Charles", and thereafter Moray House College of Education in Edinburgh, Scotland. Coltrane later called for private schools to be banned and used to be known as "Red Robbie", rebelling against his conservative upbringing through involvement with Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the Labour Party and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Career
Coltrane moved into acting in his early twenties, taking the stage name Coltrane and working in theatre and comedy. Appearing in the 1981 BBCtelevision comedy series A Kick Up the Eighties, his comic skills also brought him roles in The Comic Strip Presents series and the comedy sketch shows Alfresco and Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee. Coltrane moved into roles in films such as Flash Gordon, Death Watch, Balham, Gateway to the South, Scrubbers, Krull, The Supergrass, Defence of the Realm, Absolute Beginners, Mona Lisa and appeared as "Annabelle" in The Fruit Machine. On television, he appeared in The Young Ones, Tutti Frutti, as Samuel Johnson in Blackadder , and in a number of stand-up and sketch comedy shows. He played the part of Falstaff in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V He co-starred with Eric Idle in Nuns on the Run, and played the Pope in The Pope Must Die. He also played a would-be private detective obsessed with Humphrey Bogart in the TV play The Bogie Man. His roles continued in the 1990s with the TV series Cracker, 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 and The World Is Not Enough, a supporting role in From Hell, as well as half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films. J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, 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. The 7ft ex-England and British Lions rugby player, Martin Bayfield stood in for the 6 ft 1in Coltrane in some scenes. Coltrane has 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 saw him cross North America from Los Angeles to New Yorkbehind the wheel of a 1951 Cadillac Series 62 coupe convertible, a journey of 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 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 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.
Personal life
Coltrane married Rhona Gemmell on 11 December 1999. The couple have two children: son Spencer, and daughter Alice. Coltrane and Gemmell separated in 2003 and later divorced.
