{"id":773902,"date":"2026-07-01T19:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/773902\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T19:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:20:09","slug":"british-actor-michael-byrne-dies-at-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/773902\/","title":{"rendered":"British actor Michael Byrne dies at 82"},"content":{"rendered":"

Byrne\u2019s cause of death was not immediately revealed. The Guardian first reported his death<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Byrne appeared in films and TV shows since the 1960s, with his latest credit in 2023, according to his IMDb page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also held a role in Mel Gibson\u2019s \u201cBraveheart,\u201d playing a violent soldier named Smythe.<\/p>\n

Byrne started his career on the small screen, scoring roles in TV shows such as \u201cNo Hiding Place,\u201d \u201cSilent Playground\u201d and \u201cITV Saturday Night Theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n

His film career took off in 1963 in \u201cThe Scarlet Blade.\u201d The film was later retitled \u201cThe Crimson Blade\u201d in the U.S. <\/p>\n

Prior to that, as Variety reported<\/a>, Byrne starred on stage with a number of roles in shows for Laurence Olivier\u2019s National Theatre Company, including \u201cRomeo and Juliet,\u201d \u201cThe Cherry Orchard,\u201d \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing,\u201d \u201cDeath and the Maiden at the Royal Court,\u201d \u201cThe Double Dealer\u201d and \u201cThe Seagull.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d series, he played an older Gellert Grindelwald, a notorious dark wizard. Over his seven-decade career, Byrne racked up more than 170 credits, according to Variety, from TV to film to theater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Byrne\u2019s cause of death was not immediately revealed. The Guardian first reported his death. Byrne appeared in films…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-773902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}