Gleeson signed up for Harry Potter role

Irish actor Brendan Gleeson has been signed up to star in the next instalment of the Harry Potter series, Warner Bros have announced.

Gleeson, star of films like Michael Collins and The General, will play Potter’s new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, the fearsome Mad-Eye Moody,

Also signed up is Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes, who played memorable evil guys in Red Dragon and Schindler’s List, has signed on to play the wicked warlock Voldemort.

Voldemort is so bad that the magical characters in author JK Rowling’s stories do their best not to speak his name aloud.

In the first three instalments of the saga, a deadly magic spell meant for a baby Harry Potter backfired and deprived him of a body.

So only his spirit wrought havoc in The Sorcerer’s Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and the recent Prisoner of Azkaban.

But Voldemort finally returns in the flesh in part four: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Filming has been under way on Goblet since June 25, mainly with star Daniel Racliffe as the boy-wizard, and co-stars Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as his pals Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

Other additions to the cast include and Miranda Richardson, (The Crying Game, Sleepy Hollow) as Rita Skeeter, a gossip columnist for a magical newspaper.

The cast also includes Robert Pattinson as Hogwarts student Cedric Diggory, Stanislav Ianevski as Quidditch star Viktor Krum, French actress Clemence Poesy as the heart-fluttering visiting student Fleur Delacour, Katie Leung as Potter’s love-interest and Quidditch rival Cho Chang.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, directed by Four Weddings and a Funeral filmmaker Mike Newell, is scheduled for release in November 2005.