LONDON (AP) – Versatile British actor Paul Ritter, whose roles ranged from a hapless suburban patriarch in sitcom “Friday Night Dinner” to a Soviet engineer who helps cause a nuclear disaster in “Chernobyl,” has died, his agent said Tuesday. He was 54 and had been suffering from a brain tumor.

A familiar face to British television viewers and theatregoers, Ritter played Martin Goodman, the eccentric father of a London Jewish family, in the acerbic but warm Channel 4 sitcom “Friday Night Dinner.”

He also played ill-fated nuclear engineer Anatoly Dyatlov in the Emmy-winning HBO drama “Chernobyl;” the wizard Eldred Worple in “Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince;” and a devious political operative in the James Bond film “Quantum of Solace.”

Those who worked with Ritter in his most famous roles rated him highly. Robert Popper, the creator of “Friday Night Dinner,” said Ritter “was a lovely, wonderful human being. Kind, funny, super caring and the greatest actor I ever worked with.”

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