‘Harry Potter’ Actor Stabbed to Death

Robert Knox killed in senseless act of violence outside bar

“Harry Potter” fans were forced to deal with somber news Saturday, when young actor Robert Knox, who will appear as Hogwarts student Marcus Belby in this fall’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” was stabbed to death outside a London bar.

“We are all shocked and saddened by this news, and at this time our sympathies are with his family,” read a statement released by Warner Bros., the film’s distributor.

The 18-year-old was defending his younger brother in an early-morning argument with the 21-year-old suspect outside southwest London’s Metro, according to U.K.-based Web site Times Online. Paramedics attempted to revive Knox at the scene, but were unsuccessful. He was later pronounced dead at nearby Queen Elizabeth hospital.

Principal filming on the penultimate “Potter” film (third-to-last, if the two-part “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is counted twice) finished just days earlier on May 17. The movie was the native Londoner’s first big-screen feature, Knox having appeared twice before on English television.

“Iron Man’ Downey Says ‘I’m Back’

“I’m making a hell of a comeback,” says Robert Downey, Jr. who has the starring role in the Paramount’s summer tentpole, ‘Iron Man’. “What I’m loving lately is hearing that Iron Man was always a second-tier superhero…operative word, was,”

Downey met with director Jon Favreau at Marvel. “In the hallway on the way out I’m looking these posters films they have that have done fairly well,” says Downey. “I’m thinking, this could be cool. I said, Jon, I think I’m really the guy for this role. He says, I think you’d be perfect, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I said, well I think it’s going to happen. Let me know if it comes down to a screen test or something. It would be a pleasure. And, that’s how it went down.”

“The hardest part was trusting that all this gack and gear was going to balance out with how we do the acting,” says Downey. “It was $165 million, or something like that, that was going to go down the tubes if we didn’t try to make something entertaining. My feeling about when I’m working is it’s an athletic endeavor. I’m trying to make or beat a time. The hardest part of this is it was a really big science project.” That was the mental part. The other challenge was physical.

“It was a physically demanding part,” says Downey. “I figured, if I was going to look like I could be in shape, I might as well do it before I’m too old to have it be feasible. Sometimes you just train in order to be able to survive what you’re going to have to do on the job.”

“The coolest for me was John and I at the end of a 12-hour day got into some cars in Seoul, Korea, went out to the military base and did an impromptu screening for the soldiers and some of their kids,” says Downey. “That was something else! That really gave us a shot in the ass.”

“I think that mythology and science are practically the same thing these days,” says Downey. “We’re getting on the plane to come here and it says Popular Mechanics ‘The Real Iron Man’ and it’s talking about these Raytheon super-soldier things that they’re building. They say that by 2020 we’ll have these things.”

Downey compares his comeback to Fisherman’s wharf in San Francisco. “There’s this tank of crabs and you pick them out,” says Downey. “Every once and a while this crab will flit to the top like it’s going to get out. Every time one of them gets to the top, one of the other crabs will pull him back down. So, you’ve got to try to get out of the tank.”

‘Iron Man’Rating: PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content

Distributor: Paramount

Running Time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

Release Date: May 2, 2008 (wide)

CSI Star Arrested Long List of Drugs

Perhaps not content with a common DUI like other actors, CSI’s Gary Dourdan arrested for crack, smack, X and more...

In a scene reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s famous “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” and his bag full of mixed drugs, CSI star Gary Dourdan was arrested for a remarkable slew of substances after being found “slumped unconscious” in his car upon leaving the Coachella Music festival.

Police found substances believed to be crack cocaine, heroin and ecstasy in the vehicle and various prescription-only drugs, said by police to be “a virtual pharmacy’s worth of prescription and illegal drugs” as well as “items relating to drugs.”

The 41-year-old was held after being found “asleep” or “unconscious” according to police was found in a parked car in Palm Springs, California.

The Palm Springs PD said the actor was busted at approximately 5:12 a.m. when officers approached his vehicle and found him “asleep” or “unconscious” in the vehicle’s drivers seat, “parked on the wrong side of the road with the interior lights still on” according to the police report.

The actor - whose character, Warrick Brown, has battled an addiction to pills on the crime drama was taken into custody at the scene and booked at the Palm Springs jail for possession of narcotics and possession of dangerous drugs. He was held for several hours and ultimately released at 10:30 a.m. on $5,000 bail.

The arresting officer described Dourdan (identified on his California driver’s license as Robert Gary Durdin) as “disoriented” and appearing to be under the influence of either drugs or alcohol.
Earlier this month, CBS and Dourdan confirmed he would not be renewing his contract or returning as the pill-popping Warrick Brown on the smash crime procedural after the show’s May 15 finale.

Perhaps he was looking for the escaped giant floating Pink Floyd Pig that was accidentally released or did he merely stop to “top off” and then pass out?