Kate Bush Remembers Late Friend and Collaborator Actor Robbie Coltrane

Kate Bush is remembering her friend the late actor Robbie Coltrane, who died on October 14 at the age of 72. Coltrane appeared in Bush’s video “Deeper Understanding” in 2011 and a track off her 1985 album, Hounds of Love.

“I’m really grateful that he agreed to star in a video that we made some years ago,” said Bush in a statement of Coltrane’s participation in the “Deeper Understanding” video. “It was incredibly exciting to watch him at work and to be in the presence of his deeply profound intelligence and earthy wit. He was so much fun. I’m really going to miss him.” 

Originally released on Bush’s 1989 album, The Sensual World, “Deeper Understanding” received a new version on her ninth album Director’s Cut in 2011. In the video, directed by Bush, Coltrane, known for starring as Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films, plays a slightly darker role as someone who loses touch with reality and his family for the sake of technology. Comedian Noel Fielding (The Great British Bake Off, The Mighty Boosh) also appears in the video.

Friends for many years, Coltrane and Bush worked together nearly 40 years ago when the singer employed him to “act” as one of the voices trying to wake her up on the song “Waking the Witch,” off her fifth album Hounds of Love.

“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don’t drown,” said Bush in a 1992 interview. “My mother’s in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench, the guy that mixed the album with us is in there … Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says, ‘Wake up child, pay attention.’”

Read Kate Bush’s full statement below: 

I was very upset to hear the news about Robbie.

I’m really grateful that he agreed to star in a video that we made some years ago. It was incredibly exciting to watch him at work and to be in the presence of his deeply profound intelligence and earthy wit. He was so much fun. I’m really going to miss him.

I had so much respect for his many talents and his generosity of spirit. We’ve lost one of our great treasures.

Kate Bush 1978 (Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage)