
Died at 78
male
Richard Thomas Griffiths (July 31, 1947 – March 28, 2013) was an English actor of film, television, and stage. For his performance in the stage play The History Boys, Griffiths won a Tony Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. For the 2006 film adaptation, Griffiths was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He played Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films (2001-2010) and Great Uncle Matthew Brown "Gum" in the BBC film Ballet Shoes (2007). He also portrayed Uncle Monty in Withnail and I (1987), and Henry Crabbe in Pie in the Sky (1994–1997). Earlier in his career, he had supporting roles in such critically acclaimed films as Chariots of Fire (1981), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Gandhi (1982), and The Naked Gun 2+1⁄2: The Smell of Fear (1991). In his later career he appeared in Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011).

In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever. A young American woman, Apryl, arrives at Barrington House. She's been left an apartment by her mysterious Great Aunt Lillian who died in strange circumstances. Rumours claim Lillian was mad. But her diary suggests she was implicated in a horrific and inexplicable event decades before. A crime now buried in secrecy. But one that haunted her for years and prevented certain residents from ever straying far from the building. Determined to learn something of this eccentric woman, when Apryl begins to unravel the hidden story of Barrington House, she quickly learns that a transforming, evil still inhabits the building. And her quest leads to the discovery that the doorway to apartment sixteen is a gateway to something altogether more terrifying...
