Leslie Phillips, voice of Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat, dies at 98

The actor Leslie Phillips He has died at the age of 98. The cinematographic career of this secondary veteran of British cinema exceeds 170 titles, highlighting his link to the comedy sketch program carry-on and the contribution of the voice in the original version of the Sorting Hat in the saga Harry Potter.

Born in Tottenham, North London, in 1924, Phillips began performing on stage and working as an extra in film productions as a teenager; The Citadel (1938), from KingVidor, It is one of the first titles in his mile-long working life. At the same time, she also participated in some of the first films to be shot at London’s Pinewood studios, such as careful what you do (Carol Reed, 1938) or the troubadour prince (Victor Schertzinger, 1939).

During World War II he acted in the West End until he was called up. It took several years after the war for Phillips to get his first recognized credits on the big screen, already in the 1950s, after an intense tour of music hall shows where he specialized in humorous interpretations of English stereotypes. So he came to the television series My Wife Jacqueline (1952), where he began to forge the comic style that he would use in the saga Carry On.

the girls (1957), the colorful musical of George Cukor, It was a big movie success that could have given her a passport to Hollywood, but Leslie Phillips preferred to stay home and not become, in her own words, “a David Niven second class.” That’s how he got into the comedy troupe Carry On, an institution of English humor whose titles would fill movie theaters with laughter for the next two decades.

From ‘Carry On’ to ‘Harry Potter’

Carry On Nurse (1959), Carry On Teacher (1959) and Carry On Constable (1960) cemented Phillips’s fame as a lofty, uptight bourgeois, inscribing recurring phrases and catchphrases such as “Ding Dong,” “Well, hello!” or “I Say!”. He is not without his grace that several decades later, already in the age of the internet and social networks, he would go on to star in memes in another way: as the Sorting Hat of the saga Harry Potter.

Phillips gave voice to the CGI hat that decides which house each new Hogwarts student belongs to, and with whom Harry had his ups and downs when he entered the school of witchcraft and wizardry. The actor worked in three films of the saga: harry potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and the latest installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011).

Memories of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985), The Sun’s empire (Steven Spielberg, 1987) or Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Simon West, 2001) are some of the dozens of films in which Leslie Phillips participated as a secondary. In 2004, Danny Boyle gave him a small role in Millions interpreting himself. But perhaps the greatest tribute to a career so dedicated to people having a good time came in 2007, when he earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work opposite Peter O’Toole in Venus (2006), of Roger Michelle.

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Leslie Phillips, voice of Harry Potter’s Sorting Hat, dies at 98