Sir Michael Gambon’s marital ‘arrangement’ – and how it lasted for 20 years
Does Michael Gambon belong in Slytherin? It’s been revealed that the Harry Potter star, who passed away in September 2023 aged 82, bequeathed ￡1.5 million to his wife, Lady Anne Gambon – and left nothing at all to his girlfriend of more than 20 years, Philippa Hart, even though the couple had two sons together.
That shocking reveal comes courtesy of Gambon’s will, which was published on Tuesday, and which reflects the extraordinary personal life of the late actor – known to millions as kindly Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the Potter movies.
Lady Gambon is an executor of the will, which is dated December 28 2016, as is hers and Gambon’s 60-year-old son, Fergus, who appears on Antiques Roadshow as a ceramics expert.
But they hardly need Fiona Bruce to tell them that this inheritance of ￡1,465,882 is a substantial sum. According to a provision in the will, it would otherwise have passed to Fergus if she had died before Gambon. There is no mention of Hart.
When asked by the Daily Mail if she knew about the will’s surprising contents, Hart, who was speaking from her ￡1.5 million home in west London (and who had reportedly split from Gambon before his death), said: “It’s none of my business. I really don’t want to talk about this.”
Gambon’s lucky recipients, Fergus and Lady Gambon, were similarly reticent.
The actor’s other two sons with Hart, Tom, 17, and William, 15, aren’t entirely forgotten: according to the will, each inherits ￡10,000 and one of his Variety Club of Great Britain awards. Tom gets a gong from 1987, William from 2000. However, that’s hardly the same as a six-figure windfall.
Gambon definitely deserves another award: the trophy for the messiest love life.
He was born to an engineer father and seamstress mother in Dublin in 1940, and the family moved to London when young Gambon was six. He left school at 15 and had plans to follow in his father’s footsteps, until he fell in love with acting instead.
He also fell for mathematician Anne Miller, and the pair were married in 1962 – the same year that Gambon made his professional theatre debut in a production of Othello.
With his growing success via TV projects like The Singing Detective and Maigret came added press scrutiny, but Gambon was always fiercely protective of his spouse. When one interviewer asked him about his wife, he responded “What wife?”.
It was typical of Gambon’s mischievous approach to the press. He often played a game with interviewers, trying to sneak increasingly outrageous claims into articles – such as that he’d been a great ballet dancer, but suffered a career-ending injury when he fell into the orchestra pit. When pressed on his sexuality, he once quipped: “I used to be gay, but I was forced to give it up, because it made my eyes water.”
However, unlike those amusing falsehoods, it turns out there really was a juicy story to report when it came to Gambon’s marriage.
In 2000, he met the striking redheaded Hart – who was 25 years his junior – while filming the Channel 4 movie Longitude. Gambon starred as clockmaker John Harrison, while Hart was working as a set dresser. Her career was about to take off too: she went on to work as a set designer on movies like The Hours and Nanny McPhee, and TV series A Very British Scandal.
Gambon was smitten. By 2001, he was bringing Hart to the set of movie Gosford Park (the precursor to Downton Abbey). He introduced her to castmates Charles Dance and Maggie Smith as his “girlfriend” – even though he was still married – and described her as “the love of my life”.
Understandably, Lady Gambon was devastated when she found out about the affair, and he moved out of their ￡5 million Grade II-listed home in Meopham, near Gravesend, Kent. However, as a devout Catholic, Lady Gambon reportedly refused to contemplate a divorce.
But it seems it was never as simple as Gambon replacing his wife with a younger model. Instead, a sort of ménage à trois developed, apparently by mutual consent. Friends of Lady Gambon said that she insisted “they’ve never been apart”.
Meanwhile, Gambon moved Hart from her one-bedroom flat in Westbourne Grove, west London, to a more substantial four-bedroom Victorian terraced house in nearby Chiswick.
Gambon then began regular commutes between his wife in the country and his girlfriend in London, zipping between the two in his beloved sports cars: his Ferrari, Mercedes, and a black Audi R8.
The actor christened the last of these “Teutonic Viagra”. (Gambon was a notorious guest on Top Gear – partly because he was a dedicated motorhead, but mainly because he risked his life on the track, careering around a corner on just two wheels.)
Gambon also reportedly gifted his wife a matching sports car as a thank you for taking him back. Perhaps that commitment – to his ’n’ hers Mercedes models, if nothing else – took the sting out of his continuing affair.
Lady Gambon focussed on her own hobbies: creating ceramics on a potter’s wheel (an annexe of their country pile was specially adapted for the purpose), bookbinding, and socialising with her rural neighbours.
Hart gave birth to sons Tom in 2007 and Will in 2009, all while Gambon split his time between his dual families. He even kept up yet another home in London – this one just for him, to give him “breathing space” while he was working.
It was pretty impressive multitasking. He would play devoted husband and dad with his new clan, and attend celebrity gatherings with Hart such as dinners with friends Jeremy Clarkson and AA Gill, then head back to Kent and rock up to the village summer garden party with Lady Gambon on his arm.
A guest at the latter, Geraldine Hasler, commented: “I think Anne finds it strange that people say Michael left her for this other woman. As far as anyone who knows them is concerned, they are still very much married.”
Hasler continued: “Anne is a lovely woman, very humble. She is very supportive of Michael. They go to quite a few events together in the village. He comes over as a Jack-the-lad, but underneath it all, I think he’s quite shy.”
Another friend of Gambon’s quipped: “It is a very strange set of circumstances worthy of a film script itself.” But they added: “Michael is very open with his wife and she accepts the second relationship, although there have been rows in the past.”
A fellow village resident said that Lady Gambon “never mentions anything to do with Michael’s mistress. But she happily talks away about him and which new part he’s playing. When he’s at home, they’re like any other husband and wife I know. They seem like a perfectly normal couple.”
But they added: “Anne must know that in a small community like this tongues will wag about what her husband gets up to in London. In spite of it all she remains very dignified. Maybe she realises the only way to keep him is to let him lead this rather odd double life.”
Actress Hetty Baynes met Gambon’s younger sons when they worked together on The Casual Vacancy in 2015, the BBC’s adaptation of JK Rowling’s novel. Baynes said Gambon was “never happier than when his boys were on set”.
She did note that they probably “run him ragged”, since “having a child in later life can be an exhausting thing”. Gambon was in his mid-70s by this point. But Baynes revealed that Philippa, who she described as “amazing”, “does an awful lot of the work”.
Gambon and Hart continued to appear in public together. In 2017 they attended Tom Stoppard’s 80th birthday party at the Chelsea Physic Garden, accompanied by son Tom, then aged nine.
However, we don’t know exactly what was happening with this unconventional set-up at the time of the actor’s passing in 2023. In a statement, Lady Gambon and Fergus said that they were by his bedside when he died, following a bout of pneumonia. Hart wasn’t in the picture.
If Gambon had gone back to his wife full-time, that might explain why she became the major recipient of his fortune. It’s also worth noting that Hart isn’t exactly struggling: she has her own career, and she retains her large townhouse in a smart London neighbourhood.
There may also have been a private arrangement made earlier between Gambon and Hart which isn’t reflected in the will: a gift of money, property or other valuable assets.
Even so, it makes for strange optics, especially as Gambon must have known his will would become a public talking point. His commitment to privacy originally stemmed from a chivalrous protective instinct, but by not supplying any sort of explanation for this choice, he’s left us with a rather grim view of his treatment of his partner and children.
Perhaps he should have listened to a spot of Dumbledore wisdom. “Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”
