Just like the stunningly good-looking, comedians find it hard to get taken seriously in cinema. Even the brightest of them - Woody Allen or Steve Martin, for example - find that their "straight" work is usually given short shrift by a laugh-starved public. The financial imperative, consequently, demands that they stay funny. How, then, did Robbie Coltrane, for years known only as that fat Glaswegian comic on the peripheries of the Comic Strip team, manage to find fame and consistent work offers in Hollywood, based entirely upon his thespian abilities? How could it be that, while his far more illustrious peers were struggling away in such trash as Bring Me The Head Of Mavis Davis, Coltrane waslarging it in not one, but two James Bond blockbusters?

He was born Robert MacMillan, on the 30th of March, 1950, in Rutherglen, on the outskirts of Glasgow. His parents were both Scottish Calvinists. His father, Ian, was a GP and extremely busy - Robbie claims he hardly spoke to him till he was 6. His mother, Jean, was a teacher. Like her husband, she was bright and curious, keeping music, films and literature high on the family's agenda. Robbie has claimed that his

memory is of lying beneath the piano while his mother played.

There were other early influences that would heavily mark his later career. Not only did Robbie grow to love music, painting and films, he also fell for motor vehicles, and lorries in particular. His heroes included both actors and long-distance drivers. He'd even run around pretending to BE a lorry. And, as he approached puberty, there were his dad's books. As well as running the surgery, Ian worked as a police surgeon, thus the bookshelves held some thoroughly enticing tomes on biology, pathology and murderous mayhem in general. When Robbie was 11, Ian wanted him to view some crime victims, believing our culture foolishly cowers before death. Jean refused. Nevertheless, Robbie's extra-curricular delvings into those books gave him a far-above-average insight. He wanted to know WHY people do things like that.


He would also suffer, at an early age, genuine tragedy. Ian would die from lung cancer when Robbie was still in his teens. Worse, in 1976, Robbie's younger sister, Jane, committed suicide while studying at York University. Like Robbie, she was bubbling over with life, but suffered from depression. It was Robbie who travelled down to collect her belongings. On the way home, wild with grief, he would smash up his train carriage.

After a primary education at a local state school, Robbie had been sent to the Glenalmond public school in Perthshire, known as The Eton Of Scotland. This place was deeply authoritarian, with bullying and disciplinary beatings commonplace. Due to this unhappy experience, Robbie would later call for all public schools to be banned and swear he'd never send his son to one, "Not unless I hate him". But, while there, Fat Rab (as he was then called - friends say he named himself) used comedy and natural ebullience to get him through. He was immensely popular with the other kids. He once hung the prefects' gowns from the school's clock-tower. And, for this was public school, he joined a very minor cult, known as The Curry Boys. This, as ever, was born from a need to belong, not a desire to slaughter the Christ-Child, but the initiation ceremony was still notably revolting. The Boys had buried a crow's head which, naturally, became infested with maggots. Newcomers were required to pucker up and kiss it.

As he

epression. It was Robbie who travelled down to collect her belongings. On the way home, wild with grief, he would smash up his train carriage.

After a primary education at a local state school, Robbie had been sent to the Glenalmond public school in Perthshire, known as The Eton Of Scotland. This place was deeply authoritarian, with bullying and disciplinary beatings commonplace. Due to this unhappy experience, Robbie would later call for all public schools to be banned and swear he'd never send his son to one, "Not unless I hate him". But, while there, Fat Rab (as he was then called - friends say he named himself) used comedy and natural ebullience to get him through. He was immensely popular with the other kids. He once hung the prefects' gowns from the school's clock-tower. And, for this was public school, he joined a very minor cult, known as The Curry Boys. This, as ever, was born from a need to belong, not a desire to slaughter the Christ-Child, but the initiation ceremony was still notably revolting. The Boys had buried a crow's head which, naturally, became infested with maggots. Newcomers were required to pucker up and kiss it.

As he grew, so he became more rebellious, as befits a natural artist. At one point, expulsion was considered, but the teachers feared the reaction of Robbie's fellow pupils. Besides, though not academically brilliant, when he was interested he was an achiever. By 15, he'd reached a reasonable level of fitness, and had grown to 6' 1", allowing him to play prop for the First XV, as well as tour Canada with the Scotland schoolboy side. Beyond this, he was head of the debating society, and won prizes for his art.

In his teens, Robbie's vocation was unclear. He had made his stage debut, aged 12, delivering charged rants from Henry V while wrapped in chain mail. He loved movies and believes himself to have been utterly changed by Marlon Brando's biker in The Wild One, particularly the scene where he's asked "What are you rebelling against?" and he replies "What have you got?" He would, he thought, never take gyp from others, and never do what was expected of him. But Robbie was no simple vandal, he was interested in making things, as evinced by his older sister Annie's habit of sending him pictures of Orson Welles to cheer him up.

Annie was studying graphic art in Edinburgh, and Robbie would often visit her. Noticing how he got on with her friends, he realised that he too was an artist so, when the time came, he enrolled at Glasgow Art School, to study painting. Slowly, he recognised that his work was not up to his own high standards, but he continued on to graduation, then another year at Edinburgh's Moray House College Of Education before deciding that art was not for him.

Film was to be the thing. In 1973, his 50-minute documentary, Young Mental Health (a further pointer towards his most famous role) was voted Film Of The Year by the Scottish Education Council. Robbie, who'd take the name Coltrane due to his love of jazz, began to hang out with actors in Glasgow and Edinburgh, performing on the fringes of the Edinburgh Festival, as well as working as a chauffeur, driving directors and stars around. Supporting himself with a series of low-paid jobs, throughout the Seventies he worked with the San Quentin Theatre Group, the Bush Theatre, and Edinburgh's renowned Traverse Theatre. And it was with this last group that he formed a working relationship with playwright and director John Byrne,