Actress Imelda Staunton has signed a petition calling for Bradford’s former Odeon cinema to be saved.

During her visit to the Bradford International Film Festival, the Harry Potter star put her name to the document, despite a planning application for the demolition of the 1930s cinema already being approved.

The plans would see the current building replaced by a £40m mixed-use scheme, called New Victoria Place.

Richard Killip, spokesman for the Save The Odeon group, said: “It would be all too easy to draw a link between Dolores Umbridge, Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher at Hogwart’s, and the crusade to defend this building from those agencies that have decided they want to demolish it.

“This is a historically important, structurally-sou-nd building.”

A report into the condition of the former cinema, which accompanied the planning application, concluded it was not economically viable to retain any of it.