Inside 'Harry Potter' Star Robbie Coltrane's Final Months Living As Recluse In Scottish Highlands Before His Death At 72

The late Scottish star reportedly lived in the same rented barn conversion situated in the hills just west of Glasgow at a tiny cost of £1,000 ($1,350 US Dollars) a month for over two decades.

The actor's landlord, an aristocratic landowner who rented Coltrane the house, spoke out shortly before Coltrane’s passing to reveal how the Harry Potter star gradually withdrew from public life to live a hermit life.

In the pictures, another barn to the left of the house is where Robbie collected and tinkered with the old cars. At least he did. In recent years before his death, the actor’s health deteriorated and his osteoarthritis did not allow him to get under the hood or drive them.

“Reclusive is definitely the word I would use to describe Robbie. He is our neighbor and in fact, his barn is on the closest of our 11 farms to us here,” Edmonstone said one year before Coltrane’s death. “But there is no neighborliness coming from him - not for years. Many years ago we would see him for private dinners. But that has stopped now.”

"I have not seen him since a private dinner about five years ago or maybe more. It is what it is. You can take a horse to water as they say. He just does not want to be part of things in the community any longer. He has completely shrunken away from things. It's very sad,” Edmonstone continued.

“My brother pheasant shoots near the barn also and he has never seen him. No one sees him - ever - but he is in there. We know because he orders from Chillies in Blanefield - the local take-away every night. Honestly I am not joking - he is their best customer."

A worker at Chillies, who did not wish to be named, said: "Robbie (Coltrane) used to come in all the time but we now deliver to him. He has a bad hip so he has not been able to drive. He is a very good and loyal customer."

Those who knew Coltrane well said his health woes saw him descend back into a lonely spiral of partying. Coltrane's association with drink was well-known.

As a young actor, who had moved from Glasgow to London, he was well known for “rampages” around Soho — boozy, promiscuous behavior. One party trick was biting chunks out of a wineglass and chewing it around his mouth.

In Coltrane's words, his younger self was “a bottle-of-whisky-a-day-or-nothing man.” He once admitted: “I can drink a gallon of beer and not feel the least bit drunk.”

His then girlfriend, artist Robin Paine, complained that he was horribly unfaithful. That all changed when he met teenage student Rhona Gemmell in a pub on Christmas Eve in 1988. They went on to marry and have a son and a daughter, who are both now adults, and moved to the countryside.

Coltrane and Gemmell divorced in 2003. Last year, the actor made the surprise claim in a rare newspaper interview that he "had had a girlfriend for the past 12 years". The claim seemed to be a bold one since neither press photographers nor friends of Coltrane had ever met the alleged woman. Neither had she ever been spotted on his arm or at a red-carpet event.

Edmonstone was certain that Coltrane's claim to have a partner was simply a smokescreen to keep interest in his chaotic life, and long bouts of reclusiveness, broken.

He clearly remained very overweight (doctors told him to lose seven stones before they could operate on his hips). His hair was also now a shock of white and grey where it had before been jet black. His face, one full and jolly, was just puffy and wrinkled.

Surprised social media users also spotted Coltrane at the local Co-Op shop near his Scottish Highlands home in the years before his death this week.

One wrote on Twitter in 2019: "I lived in a little place called -------- for a while. It was the most beautiful place I had even seen. On a good day, from the hills nearby, you could look down on Loch Lomond. Was rather freaked out to see Robbie Coltrane in the local shop however." Another said: "Co-Op in --------. Big, I mean BIG trampy-looking fella with greasy hair, wearing the biggest pair of joggers I've ever seen. Buying a bottle of vodka and a black bottle of whisky. Robbie Coltrane."

A United Kingdom newspaper article last year suggested Coltrane had in fact had a long-awaited operation on his hips in the United States. Although there was never any word from the actor on the claim. He was also not seen standing during the two interviews he gave for the reunion.

Coltrane was a jobbing actor with some success in the UK - most famously in TV's Cracker - before he landed the role of a lifetime as Hagrid in 2001. When Potter-mania hit, Coltrane, who had always valued his private life, sought somewhere completely out of the way to live.

It was then that he found a discrete property owned by a wealthy Scottish aristocratic family, the Edmonstone Clan, to move into to keep a low profile amid what was fast becoming Potter-mania.

Edmonstone explained: “The estate is some 20,000 acres and comprises eleven different farms, and farm buildings and residential buildings. We have a property management company which finds suitable tenants for us and Mr. Coltrane back then wanted exactly what we could offer - something discreet and a little out of the way.”

“We had a look around for him and eventually he moved into a lovely cottage down a long track next to a boutique hotel we run - Ardoch House in Blanefield.”

“Back then in 2000, because of the way primitive car used to work, people looking for our hotel and campsite unfortunately used to turn up at his front door. Imagine their surprise when Hagrid answered the door! It was exactly the opposite of what he wanted. He lasted about a year before he came to us and said ‘do you have anything else?'”

This is when Coltrane found and moved into what back then was a newly renovated barn conversion on the Edmonstone Clan estate.

“We had a look around and found him a place he thought ideal - a remote barn conversion on the estate where he has lived ever since, apparently unknown to the rest of the world.”

“It’s very out of the way. Up a winding single track that only leads to one other property. The barn has great visibility. Large glass floor-to-ceiling windows and a sort of crow’s next office room on top with 360-degree views all around. It’s not the kind of place where anyone can turn up without an invite. "Unwanted guests stick out a mile. As such it’s always been perfect.”

“Mr. Coltrane [had] a 20-year lease. As with all our tenants, the rent is low - around £1,000 a month. It’s an unusual lease, but common up here on large estates like this that run as trusts.”

“It’s a long-term improvement lease whereby the tenant signs up to improve the property every year. It’s managed by our property management firm Endrick Property Management. So our managers will have an arrangement whereby they will come and look over the property periodically and agree that in the next 12 months for example, Mr. Coltrane should have a new bathroom installed at his expense as the old one is looking a little threadbare - that kind of thing.

“In this way the property increases in value every year. Trusts such as ours pay tax on rental income so we keep the rental income low. But we don't pay tax on increases in value on the properties themselves (unless we sell them of course). All estates like ours are trusts in Scotland now.

“So for tenants on perhaps modest means, it can be a fantastic way to pay a relatively small amount of rent to live in a large property they are prepared to do a little work on.”

“It just seemed to work for Mr. Coltrane back then, as now. I cannot comment on his wealth. It’s none of my business. It works for everyone.”

The barn itself has three bedrooms and bathrooms and large communal areas within. It has around a quarter acre of gardens surrounding it and also, significantly, a very large separate barn which was 20 years ago - planning record show - converted into a workshop and garage where Coltrane keeps his car collection.