Harry Potter's Great British Thespians
Jim Broadbent as Horace Slughorn, 6, 8
At first he's disguised as an armchair, explaining his ruse by saying, "It's all in the upholstery. I come by the stuffing naturally." Professor Slughorn, recruited by Dumbledore to teach Potions, does have the soft, ample contours of living-room furniture, and an amiable, fumbling but calculating nature that suggests a wizard not in the Rowling canon: Oz. Broadbent, 61, often plays expansive impresario types — as W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy, and in Moulin Rouge!, the first Narnia film and the latest Indiana Jones. Yet he won his Oscar for a quieter role, as John Bayley in Iris. It's one more indication of the range and depth displayed by all the distinguished actors in the Harry Potter films.