1. Simon Paul Adams, known professionally as Paul Ritter, was an English actor.
14 Facts About Paul Ritter
1. 2.
Paul Ritter had roles in films including Son of Rambow, Quantum of Solace, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Eagle, and Operation Mincemeat, as well as television programmes including Friday Night Dinner, Vera, The Hollow Crown, The Last Kingdom, Chernobyl, Belgravia and Resistance.
3.
Paul Ritter's father Ken Adams, a turner and fitter, worked at various CEGB power stations; his mother Joan was a school secretary.
4.
Paul Ritter's family were Catholic and he had four older sisters.
5.
Paul Ritter took this name because another Simon Adams was registered with the acting trade union, Equity, and he admired a German actor with the surname Ritter.
6.
Paul Ritter studied alongside the actor Stephen Mangan and they later acted together in a 2009 revival of the play The Norman Conquests.
7.
Paul Ritter's Pistol conveyed perfectly the shock of a man who reluctantly had left behind the rowdy cheer of Eastcheap, and found himself in middle age contemplating the melancholy of a medieval autumn.
8.
From 2005 to 2006, Paul Ritter played Otis Gardiner in the original Royal National Theatre production of Helen Edmundson's Coram Boy, for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award.
9.
Paul Ritter was nominated for a Tony Award in 2009 for his role in The Norman Conquests.
10.
Paul Ritter appeared in the first three series of British crime drama Vera, as pathologist Dr Billy Cartwright.
11.
Paul Ritter appeared in a main role as Anatoly Dyatlov, the deputy chief engineer, in the HBO and Sky Max miniseries Chernobyl.
12.
From 2011 to 2020, Paul Ritter starred as Martin Goodman in the Channel 4 comedy series, Friday Night Dinner.
13.
In 1996, Paul Ritter married Polly Radcliffe, a research fellow at King's College London.
14.
Paul Ritter died of a brain tumour on 5 April 2021, aged 54, in his home, surrounded by his family.