Where You've Seen Peter Pettigrew From Harry Potter Before

Timothy Spall is an actor with a filmography that encompasses everything from the cornerstones of Western literature to the most modern-minded pieces in contemporary cinema and is studded with awards and accolades of every kind. Here are a few of the films you might have seen him in.

Spall might play a different character in a very different setting in Tim Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd, but Potterheads will likely notice more than a few similarities with Peter Pettigrew. His character, Beadle Bamford, is a wretched, gleeful servant of Alan Rickman's sinister Judge Turpin, a man whose power he clings to in the hopes that some might rub off on him. He is deeply duplicitous, luring innocents into Turpin's path through carefully deployed secrets and lies, skimming whatever he can off the top whenever he can get away with it. And he’s not even the villain of this story, so much as he is a pitiful also-ran with delusions of grandeur.

Above all of these similarities to Pettigrew, however, is the sheer quality of Spall's performance. No one could have been as perfectly servile as he is in the role, nor so sumptuously aware of his character's impotence. Spall plays Bamford like a man who thinks he's on the up-and-up, with an actor's awareness of the fact that he definitely isn’t.

As Winston Churchill in The King’s Speech, Spall plays a larger-than-life role — yet in the context of this movie, it’s not exactly a starring one. Spall is instead a supporting player to Colin Firth as King George VI in this portrayal of the king's struggle to master his persistent stammer. As the movie winds on, tensions across Europe begins to brew, and Spall's Churchill finds himself unable make the declaration of war against Nazi Germany by himself. That is a duty that falls to the King, and the King alone.

And so, the training begins to take the King from his impenetrable stutter to smooth, confident recitation. The presence of Spall's Churchill is a grounding force in the film's final scenes, in which King George VI accomplishes his goal and changes the world, with nothing but the power of his voice, a microphone, and radio broadcasting. Keep watching the video to see where you've seen Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter before!

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Sweeney Todd | 0:15
The King's Speech | 1:22
Mr. Turner | 2:12
Enchanted | 2:56
Timothy Spall at Sea | 3:42
All or Nothing | 4:24

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