No every villain in the Harry Potter franchise. is an evil Death Eater - or, in Muggle terms, a follower of the evil Dark Lord Voldemort (played by Ralph Fiennes in the films). Take Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), for example, who first appears in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as a factory witch who comes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ostensibly to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. .. but who is really there to spy on and censor the leadership of Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). Umbridge is undeniably ugly and evil, and as series author JK Rowling explained in the Harry Potter Encyclopedia Wizarding worldthe character is firmly intended to show that "good" and "evil" are not always what they seem.

After describing a woman she once worked with who Rowling described as "suffering" who also liked pictures of fluffy kittens (as well as a difficult teacher from her past), the author continued, "So Dolores, who's one of the characters. for whom I feel the purest dislike, has become an amalgam of traits taken from these, and the various sources of her desire to control, punish and inflict pain, all in the name of law and order, I think are as reprehensible as and Lord Voldemort's unsullied advocacy of evil." (Rowling, in recent years, faced accusations of bigotry regarding her views on transgender womenoccasionally earning her comparisons to Umbridge.

Upon Dolores Umbridge's arrival at Hogwarts, she immediately makes major changes to the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum, basically declaring that students will no longer be able to practice magic in class and will instead simply learn techniques from books. Understandably resentful—especially since the Ordinary Wizarding Levels, or "OWLs," require students to actually cast spells—Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) rebel against the new of Umbridge policies, and they are summarily punished for it ... in a a lot hideous way.

As it turns out, when Umbridge tells the students that their punishment is to "write lines," she gives them a special pad that burns whatever they write into the skin on the back of their hand (in Harry's case, he has to write " No may I tell lies' for the statement that Voldemort had, in fact, returned - something the Ministry does not want the general public to know). Umbridge is so tyrannical during her tenure at Hogwarts that, right under her nose, Harry and his friends form a secret society called Dumbledore's Army where they practice defensive and offensive spells on their own. When Umbridge catches them, they almost answer until Hermione brilliantly tricks a Ministry official and professor into coming to the Forbidden Forest to see the "weapons" she says Dumbledore has provided for his "army".

The weapon is simply Grupp, a very young and volatile giant who happens to be the half-brother of Harry's friend and parental figure, Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid (the late Robbie Coltrane) - but while Harry and Hermione are in the forest with Umbridge, the woman collides with a group of centaurs. After the insult and attacking them, the centaurs carry off Umbridge; She is later seen traumatized with bits of twigs still stuck in her hair, recovering in the Hogwarts infirmary.

In the book version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry briefly catches a glimpse of Dolores Umbridge at Dumbledore's funeral - but in the movies, Imelda Staunton doesn't reprise the role until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. After hunting down one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, an object containing a fragment of his soul, Harry, Ron and Hermione infiltrate the Ministry of Magic only to discover that Umbridge, unaware that a particular locket contains a fragment of Voldemort's soul, proudly wears it for during the trials where she accuses Muggleborn wizards of "stealing" magic (which is not possible). When Harry encounters her while holding a trial of an innocent woman, he sees the locket and attacks Umbridge, stealing the necklace and freeing the innocent Muggle-born witch. So what happens to Umbridge next that?

In the same Wizarding World article, the encyclopedia says, "With the fall of Lord Voldemort, Dolores Umbridge was brought to trial for her enthusiastic collaboration with his regime and convicted of the torture, imprisonment, and death of several people (some of the innocent Muggle-borns she condemned to Azkaban did not survive their ordeal).” Here it is: Umbridge eventually faced serious punishment for her crimes and likely lived out the rest of her life in Azkaban, the remote wizarding prison guarded by the soul-sucking horrors known as the Dementors.

As for Dame Imelda Staunton, she has continued to work steadily since her last performance as Dolores Umbridge in 2011's The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (the character was not seen in the eighth and final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : Part 2" ). In 2014, she stayed in the fantasy realm playing Notgrass, one of the "good fairies," in the Disney villain origin story Maleficent (co-starring Angelina Jolie), and that same year she joined the Paddington franchise.lending her voice to the charming films as the titular bear's doting Aunt Lucy (voiced by Ben Whishaw). She then joined the original cast of the Downton Abbey television series as Lady Maud Bagshaw in the 2019 film of the same name – appearing with her real-life husband Jim Carter – as well as 2022's Downton Abbey: A New Era.

However, Staunton's best-known role of late has of course been in the Netflix original series The Crown, which chronicles the historically long reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Following Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, Staunton played the "oldest" iteration of the Queen from 2022 to 2023 for the show's fifth and sixth seasons; in a touching moment in the series finale, Staunton, Foy and Coleman appear on screen together to honor Queen Elizabeth's journey and legacy.

As for Staunton's villainous performance in the Harry Potter films, you can check out the Peacock franchise.