I’m pretty omnivorous – in fact, I don’t think of books in terms of genres. J. K. Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter’ books are no more Y.A. reading, to me, than John le Carre’s ‘Smiley’ novels are spy stories.
Not only did I have to face the great Steve Davis for 10 years, Stephen Hendry came along, who attacked the balls. He was such an incredible potter with self-belief.
Ewan was studying in London and he got this huge job in his final year, a part in Dennis Potter’s ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’ for Channel 4. He had no idea what happened on a TV set so I talked him through things.
I think readers are always patient. Look at the ‘Harry Potter’ series. Some have given up on this generation of kids as game and TV addicts, but lots of people spend lots of time patiently reading through hundreds of pages of dense prose. I think reading a comic by comparison is a lot more immediate.
I never talk about ‘Harry Potter’ because I think that would rob children of something that’s private to them. I think too many things get explained, so I hate talking about it.
I see myself doing Harry Potter films as long as I’m enjoying it and as long as they are going to challenge me as an actor. I want to be an actor – it’s my aspiration – so I want to do other films. I want to write something and I want to direct something!
The sixth Harry Potter film – I don’t like my performance in that film at all.
Twilight’ has a supernatural reference to it with werewolves and vampires. ‘Harry Potter’ has magic. ‘The Hunger Games’ is about real people put into extreme situations and circumstances.
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.
My favorite place in the world is the Harry Potter tour near London.
When I first started acting I was about nine years old. I had never been to audition in my life and my agent sent me out. It was just a commercial for ‘Harry Potter.’ That was the first thing I ever went out for and I got the ‘Harry Potter’ commercial which was really cool, but I didn’t play Harry Potter.
I sort of try to read the books when they come out impartially and not make up my mind, but the fact is when I was reading the sixth, ‘Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince’, there were bits in there where I was going, ‘God, I would love to do that because it’s so good’.
I was lucky enough to fly to New York to cover the premiere of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.’
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 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.
Well, before I knew there was going to be a film. I was the biggest Harry Potter fan. I read all the books.
There’s definitely no subtlety in what I do. When you want to get your face melted, you come to a Grace Potter and the Nocturnals concert.
We really liked the magic of ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but we could never figure out where the powers came from.
Because actually it’s really hard to get things made. It takes years. To fight the fights you inevitably have to fight, even when you’ve produced Harry Potter, you’d better have the commitment and the passion to knock down walls, not take no for an answer.
For me, the triad of ‘Harry Potter,’ the ‘Hunger Games’ and ‘Twilight’ feature strong women, and as a declared feminist, it’s a wonderful thing. These women have really opened up this particular world of storytelling, which I’m very grateful for.
I’ve done all sorts of children’s things before, but none as big as ‘Harry Potter.’
I actually have a young readers’ series that I wanna do, kind of in the same lane as a Harry Potter or Narnia or Twilight. I want to write stuff like that.
Harry Potter’ is my favorite series, and I’ve always loved that wish fulfillment, ‘anything is possible’ idea.
I’ve always liked shape-shifter characters. I gravitated towards characters like Mystique from ‘X-Men,’ Zam Wesell from ‘Star Wars,’ and Tonks from ‘Harry Potter.’
I grew up as an only child and my mother was also an only child, so we were both very passionate about reading. I think I passed that on to my daughter, who went plowing through ‘Harry Potter’ and every other book possible!
Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.
Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.
For a sculptor, a painter, a weaver, a potter, the dialogue between one’s materials and what one makes from them is easy to see: discover a new material or a new way to use a familiar one, and new things can be made, sometimes leading to the discovery of more new material, leading to more creation.
Maybe by his second year in Hogwarts, Harry Potter will learn the trick to making a movie this good, but don’t bet on it. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is one of the best films of the year.
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’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.
There’s no subtext in ‘Harry Potter,’ really; it’s all magic – anything can happen. Why do I say this? Because it’s a magic spell. It’s quite nice in a way. There is a real freedom to it. Doesn’t say much for acting, does it?
‘Harry Potter’ opened so many doors for young adult literature. It really did convince the publishing industry that writing for children was a viable enterprise. And it also convinced a lot of people that kids will read if we give them books that they care about and love.
But things such as ‘Harry Potter’, all I can do is shape my character, seek the director’s approval on that, and basically take it from there. Professor Flitwick in ‘Harry Potter’, I kind of defined how I saw him from reading the book, and luckily that matched up with the director’s vision.
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 read the last Harry Potter, and I cried for at least the last 70 pages. Awful! I was curled into a ball and I just kept sobbing. It was embarrassing. I was loud, and I just kept wiping tears away so I could see the page.
I teach 18- to 21-year-olds – the ‘Harry Potter’ generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope ‘A Discovery of Witches’ will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.
I couldn’t watch ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘House’… I was like strictly a ‘SpongeBob,’ Disney Channel, Nickelodeon kinda guy.
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 mean, I must confess I don’t own Harry Potter DVDs. My parents do. They have them all. And they like watching them.
I’m never going to be in something as commercially successful as ‘Harry Potter’ ever again. It’s impossible. So that gives me incredible freedom to go off and make the slightly off-the-wall films that I want to make.
The ‘Harry Potter’ books had a huge impact on me.
If I can make a career for myself after Potter, and it goes well, and is varied and with longevity, then that puts to bed the ‘child actors argument’.
One of the crucial things to the story of ‘Harry Potter’s’ success is just how well everyone got on. There were never any problems with anybody.
Since I had children, I cry all the time – I just had a little cry in ‘Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.’
I’ve basically grown up with Harry Potter, as so many kids my age have. It’s kind of a part of my life.
Some of the furor that surrounded a Harry Potter publication was fun.
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.
When I found out that I’m playing Nagini, I thought it was meaningful because it’s an important character in the ‘Harry Potter’ series. ‘Harry Potter’ is a franchise film with many Caucasian actors, so I thought many Korean viewers would be happy.
It was fun playing a horrible, snotty kid in ‘Harry Potter’, and then playing Prince Charming where I was also singing and playing guitar, and then playing a completely different character.
