I was born in 1991, and ‘Harry Potter’ came out in ’97, so, you know, I was really obsessed. I used to read them in one night.
I was in ‘Harry Potter,’ and nobody on the street recognizes me from that. Nobody on the street has ever stopped me from ‘Harry Potter!’
‘Harry Potter’ is very nice because it’s very easy to make children happy. All you have to do is have your photograph taken with them.
I absolutely don’t relate to being beaten down my whole life – I had amazing opportunities at a young age – but there is still in many, many people’s minds the notion that I’ll never be able to escape Harry Potter.
I first played the Royal Albert Hall when I was 14. I was a violinist with the Birmingham Schools Concert Orchestra, and we travelled down from the Midlands for the last night of the School Proms. We played some pieces from the Harry Potter films, and the violin parts were really hard.
I love ‘Harry Potter.’ I’m a huge nerd – I would dress up if I could.
I mean, I must confess I don’t own Harry Potter DVDs. My parents do. They have them all. And they like watching them.
But I can’t imagine Harry being a stockbroker at 35. That doesn’t really seem the stuff of ‘Harry Potter’.
It’s like going back to school. You know, autumn! Time for ‘Harry Potter’.
Honestly, I get more recognized for ‘Three Men and a Little Lady’ than ‘Harry Potter’.
It sounds so geeky, but I really do like studying and reading, and if I’m not working on ‘Harry Potter,’ then my greatest relaxation is to sit with a book.
I only discovered the ‘Harry Potter’ series in my tenth standard. I dived right into it, often reading non-stop through the day and night. It was the morning after one such readathon when I was to appear for a Chemistry exam. Spending my night with the third edition of Harry Potter didn’t help much, and I fared poorly.
Nobody sells books like J.K. Rowling. We have a rule in publishing: Never compare anything to ‘Harry Potter’ because it’s like lightning in a bottle.
I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can’t really move from it: it’s on buses, in stores, it’s everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.
I like playing Vernon Dursley in ‘Harry Potter,’ because that gives me a license to be horrible to kids. I hate the odious business of sucking up to the public.
I read fantasy books like the Harry Potter books, ‘Twilight,’ also biographies, and I like to read about people who have been through stuff like wars or lost their families – real life stuff, you know? I like to read about their experiences and how they coped with that.
I have read only the first ‘Harry Potter’ book. I thought it excellent, perhaps the best thing written for older children since The Hobbit. I wish the books had been around when my kids were the right age for them.
‘Harry Potter’ changed my life in more ways than one, and it helped me get through my mother’s death.
‘Harry Potter’ is the first book that ever got me into reading. I had to read it in year 7, for school, and then I kept reading all of them.
I’m also a huge nerd and love magic, especially ‘Harry Potter.’
I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don’t know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.
We can suspend disbelief about Harry Potter, and we do the same thing with God, and we do the same thing with human rights, and we do the same thing with money.
I have been in five Harry Potter films and never read a ‘Harry Potter’ book. If you are an actor, all you have is the script you are given. If you read the book, you might get disappointed about what’s been left out.
I read so much Harry Potter, that’s, like, all I wanted to talk about. I watched stuff like ‘Lizzie McGuire.’ I watched things that were very mainstream but white, and I went to a predominately white school.
‘Harry Potter’ created a generation of readers in an era when kids could have disappeared into the depths of the Internet. That’s no small feat. Every book series owes J.K. Rowling a debt of gratitude.
Well, before I knew there was going to be a film. I was the biggest Harry Potter fan. I read all the books.
It’s always at the back of my mind that acting might come to an end for me when Harry Potter finishes. I don’t know if I’m good enough to have a long career. I’ve got a bit of an inferiority complex about my acting. My self-esteem is quite low in that sense.
I was up for ‘Harry Potter’ way, way back. But I don’t quite fit the bill, I think.
I got very carried away with my ‘Harry Potter’ life and we did have school but I didn’t study. I just had fun.
I don’t like when people say I act good for my age. Who would have said that to Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson when they were filming ‘Harry Potter?’
I think, back in the day, the ultimate trifecta was considered ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ and maybe ‘Star Trek.’
For me, ‘Harry Potter’ isn’t something that changed my life. It’s just something I did that was a lot of fun and I got to experience amazing things from. But my actual, personal life is the same. Or at least I like to keep it the same.
But I like all the books. You’ve got to read them all to get the complete Harry Potter experience.
Harry Potter was my first job.
I turned down ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Spider-Man,’ two movies that I knew would be phenomenally successful, because I had already made movies like that before and they offered no challenge to me. I don’t need my ego to be reminded.
I admire the world of the books and the characters that she’s created, but I’m not an addict of Harry Potter. I don’t feel possessive about it.
I’m a ‘Harry-Potter’-till-I-die kind of person. Those are the movies I grew up on. I was like, ‘Why would I want to watch any other movies when there’s ‘Air Bud’ and ‘Harry Potter?” It makes no sense why I have to expand my movie-viewing experience when I have two really wonderful films.
I really tried out for the part of Harry Potter, but they ended up picking me for the part of the enemy of Harry. Actually it is really fun playing the bad kid because it just has so many interesting qualities to it. And Daniel Radcliffe and I get along really well off set so it’s really fun filming.
You know a lot of what worked on this was taken from Harry Potter 2, the little Doby character, we had a lot of our skin stuff worked out and that helped a lot. We have a lot of exchange happening.
My parents sent me from Venezuela to the Convent of Our Lady, a boarding school in Hastings, which was horrible – like Harry Potter without the magic. Sometimes we went into town, and if we were caught chewing gum in our uniform, members of the public would take down our names and report us to the school.
The one good thing is that I get a lot more good scripts coming through my letterbox. ‘Vera Drake’ raised my profile in one way, and then ‘Harry Potter’ in another.
The protests against Harry Potter follow a tradition that has been growing since the early 1980s and often leaves school principals trembling with fear that is then passed down to teachers and librarians.
I am stopped in the street by kids and Harry Potter fans all the time.
I’ve done all sorts of children’s things before, but none as big as ‘Harry Potter.’
The first thing I thought when I finished Ernest Cline’s ‘Ready Player One’ was, ‘My God, it’s the grown-up’s ‘Harry Potter.” Now this is from a mega ‘HP’ fan, so I mean business, here.
I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they’re going to love ‘Harry Potter,’ or they may love ‘The Hunger Games,’ but after that, they’re going to love the act of reading and wonder, ‘What else can I read?’
I will never stop being excited about ‘Harry Potter.’
I had admired the way the producers of the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise had found David Yates, who ended up doing their four final movies, and he’d come from television.
The sets were fantastic. The Harry Potter sets are brilliant. You do get transported for a second.
I live in Leeds, which is about 200 miles north of London, and I get to go and do all the ‘Harry Potter’ stuff and make great films and be part of this wonderful thing all around the world, and then I get to go home and chill out with my friends in Leeds and go watch the football and go to the pub.
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