(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 24 August 2025 6:30, UK
Most actors who’ve been in the business for upwards of 30 years tend to have at least two or three roles that they aren’t entirely proud of. For Ralph Ineson, who is more prolific than you might think, and has been acting for three decades, remarkably, only seems to have one role so far that he finds a tad embarrassing.
You might only be familiar with his name from this year, as he took on the role of the planet-eating God and antagonist in the most recent Marvel film, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. But if you’re a cinephile or a fan of fantasy, you’re more than likely very familiar with his voice.
That deep, distinctive Yorkshire growl has made parts as small as Dagmer Cleftjaw in the second season of Game of Thrones highly memorable. It also added to the authentically unsettling mood of Robert Eggers’ folk horror, The VVitch. And, it was his most distinctive addition to the Marvel universe as Galactus, with many seemingly wondering how he did it (hint: he just smokes and drinks like any standard Yorkshire bloke).
Even if you’ve avidly been following this underrated actor over the years, you might still have managed to miss his appearance in the Harry Potter films. You might be thinking, “I would have noticed that voice, it would have been perfect for a Death Eater”. Well, despite appearing in the last three instalments, Ineson didn’t utter a single word. What a waste.
The actor wasn’t exactly ecstatic about it either. “It is quite embarrassing. I ended up having been in three of the films without uttering a single line,” he told his old alma mater, Lancaster University. Despite playing the role of Amycus Carrow, who is a significant enough character during the later years in the Hogwarts universe, devolving into fascist chaos at the hands of the Death Eaters—definitely enough to have uttered at least a few lines of dialogue—he didn’t get a chance to show off his greatest asset.
In the books, Carrow is one-half of the sibling scourge of Hogwarts after Professor Snape takes over the school, doling out torturous corporal punishment to any students rebelling against the new regime. At one point, he even spits in the beloved Professor MacGonagall’s face. But alas, Ineson missed out on the chance to throw some saliva at the late, great Dame Maggie Smith’s face because all of the characters’ lines were cut between the book and the movies.
Mostly, Ineson can be spotted lurking in the background behind Alan Rickman’s Snape or casually haunting the hallways of Hogwarts. Worse still for Ineson, Amycus is wiped out in the first few seconds of the main battle. This is bad enough as it is, then you realise that meant three weeks of hours of hair and makeup just to lie dead on the ground.
“I shouldn’t be ungrateful, but it wasn’t a lot of fun,” he said, unshockingly. But thankfully, he’s more than gone on to redeem himself. Following hot on the heels of his turn as Galactus will be his portrayal of Professor Kremp in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Plus, there’s a chance he could return to work with Eggers in his upcoming horror Werwulf, but that remains to be seen.
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