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LONDON (AP) — Versatile British actor Paul Ritter, whose roles ranged from a hapless suburban patriarch in sitcom "Friday Night Dinner" to a Soviet engineer who helps cause a nuclear disaster in "Chernobyl," has died at 54.
Ritter's agent said the actor died at home on Monday evening and had been suffering from a brain tumor.
Ritter was a familiar face to British television viewers, famous as eccentric patriarch Martin Goodman in the Channel 4 sitcom "Friday Night Dinner."
He also played ill-fated nuclear engineer Anatoly Dyatlov in the HBO drama "Chernobyl" and the wizard Eldred Worple in "Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince."
Ritter also appeared as a devious political operative in the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace" and had frequent stage roles.
In 2009, Ritter was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in Alan Ayckbourn’s farce “The Norman Conquests” on Broadway, The Associated Press reported.
Deadline reported that Ritter would make a posthumous appearance in Friday Night Dinner‘s 10th-anniversary special, set to air on the U.K.’s Channel 4 later this year.
