Richard Griffiths (1947–2013)

From the New York Times :

Richard Griffiths, the rotund British actor whose stage career reached a pinnacle with his Tony-winning performance as an idealistic but tormented pedagogue in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys and who achieved popular fame in the movies as Harry Potter’s mean-spirited Uncle Vernon Dursley, died on Thursday in Coventry, England.

Griffiths played Mr. Hector in both the play and the film. The scene in which Hector talks about Thomas Hardy’s poem “Drummer Hodge” is still the best moment of poetry-in-film I know.