Due to a diagnosis of short-term memory loss, Michael Gambon, the actor who played Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies and Shakespeare’s King Lear, has announced his career has come to an end, reported The Sunday Times on Feb. 9.Hearing about the retirement of the 74-year-old Gambon, BYU-Hawaii Harry Potter fan said they are sad to hear the great actor is no longer pursuing his career while Harry Potter actors continue on in their careers. “Knowing that the actor of my favorite character from Harry Potter is getting old is kinda sad,” said Willow Bernal, a social work sophomore from Waianae. Agreeing with Bernal, Erik Adams, a biology senior from Oregon, said, “In connection to hearing that an actor has to retire, I feel the same way about the death of the great Robin Williams. These actors have great influence on our lives. It is never happy news to see a great actor leave the limelight like Michael Gambon is.”Gambon told the Sunday Times, “It’s a horrible thing to admit, but I can’t do it. It breaks my heart. It’s when the script is in front of me and it takes forever to learn. It’s frightening.”Huffington post reports Gabon said he realized that he could no longer continue acting in front of a live audience about six months ago while auditioning for a West End play and found he needed to have his lines fed to him via ear piece. Gambon explained to the Sundays Times, “There was a girl in the wings, and I had a plug in my ear so she could read me the lines. After about an hour I thought, ‘This can’t work.’” He said he couldn’t be “free on stage” when he did not know his lines word for word. According to the BBC, Gambon had a panic attack in 2009 from forgetting his lines during a play rehearsal at the National Theater. Another sad Harry Potter fan with a more positive attitude about Gambon’s retirement, Young Chae Han, an ICS sophomore from Korea, said “I think that [Gambon] is probably happy to be able to have privacy in his own life.”BBC News reported Gambon’s last appearance on the stage was in 2012 in a London production of Samuel Beckett’s play “All That Fall.” Gambon told the Sunday Times he is not going to quit his acting career altogether. Huffington Post reported that Gambon has two last adues to Hollywood; he “will next be seen in the BBC adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Causal Vacancy’ and in a movie remake of the classic sitcom ‘Dad’s Army’,” says the Huffington Post article.
Writer: Jessica Tautfest
