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Growing up with magic
By Jake Coyle |
July 15, 2009, Wednesday
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WHEN the "Harry Potter" film series is completed, the three young stars - Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint - will have inhabited J.K. Rowling's universe for half their lives.
Radcliffe, who is now 19, was 11 when he was cast as the boy wizard for the series' 2001 debut. Watson, now 19, was 10 when she auditioned for the whip-smart Hermione Granger. Grint, the eldest of the trio, is 20.
"I've probably been Ron as long as I've been Rupert," says Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, the ginger-haired, perpetually hungry friend of Harry and Hermione.
The cast and crew have taken a break from filming Rowling's last "Potter" book - to be spread over two films - to publicize the series' sixth installment, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."
The movies have gotten progressively more complex, darker and realistic - even amid the fantasy world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
As the films have matured, so has the cast.
More so than any other installment, "The Half-Blood Prince" shows that Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have gone from children to young adults. To watch the first "Potter" film is to be reminded how young the actors were when they began.
"For me to look back on the old films is an almost entirely destructive thing to do," says Radcliffe. "I just torture myself over it. I mean, I was young. I can't be held accountable for the performance I gave in the first two films: I was 11 and 12. I wasn't like Dakota Fanning ... who could seemingly just do it. It was very much a child's performance."
Radcliffe counts his last year as both his "biggest leap" and an "overwhelming blitzkrieg of camera flashes."
The soft-spoken David Yates - who's directing the final two films, to be released by Warner Bros in November 2010 and summer 2011 - is credited with helping the young cast mature.
"They're getting more experience outside of the film set and they're bringing that to the floor," says Yates.
Watson has a hard time recalling the beginning.
"This all happened to me so young," she says. "It's very hard to go back to that time and be like, 'Did I want to do this?' It feels very foggy - it all feels very blurry."
Watson has acted in a few other films (a voiceover in 2008's "The Tale of Despereaux" and the 2007 BBC film "Ballet Shoes") but she has spent most of her spare time throughout "Potter" - and this is very Hermione-like - studying.
"I would have exploded if I hadn't had school to ground me and focus me," says Watson.
She plans to study literature and art, but she has also shown interest in fashion.
The bemused Grint - whom "Azkaban" director Alfonso Cuaron once said was the one most likely to become a star - remains clearly grounded, (even if he's used his earnings to purchase a hovercraft). That playfulness is perhaps an essential quality to Grint, who was never inclined to view acting as a job.
"I don't think I ever really made the connection of it being a career," he says. "It was just something that was fun to do. In the early ones, I don't think I took the acting too seriously. I just read the lines and got on with it. Over the years, you start to take it more seriously with different directors coming in."
Radcliffe, who is now 19, was 11 when he was cast as the boy wizard for the series' 2001 debut. Watson, now 19, was 10 when she auditioned for the whip-smart Hermione Granger. Grint, the eldest of the trio, is 20.
"I've probably been Ron as long as I've been Rupert," says Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, the ginger-haired, perpetually hungry friend of Harry and Hermione.
The cast and crew have taken a break from filming Rowling's last "Potter" book - to be spread over two films - to publicize the series' sixth installment, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."
The movies have gotten progressively more complex, darker and realistic - even amid the fantasy world of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
As the films have matured, so has the cast.
More so than any other installment, "The Half-Blood Prince" shows that Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have gone from children to young adults. To watch the first "Potter" film is to be reminded how young the actors were when they began.
"For me to look back on the old films is an almost entirely destructive thing to do," says Radcliffe. "I just torture myself over it. I mean, I was young. I can't be held accountable for the performance I gave in the first two films: I was 11 and 12. I wasn't like Dakota Fanning ... who could seemingly just do it. It was very much a child's performance."
Radcliffe counts his last year as both his "biggest leap" and an "overwhelming blitzkrieg of camera flashes."
The soft-spoken David Yates - who's directing the final two films, to be released by Warner Bros in November 2010 and summer 2011 - is credited with helping the young cast mature.
"They're getting more experience outside of the film set and they're bringing that to the floor," says Yates.
Watson has a hard time recalling the beginning.
"This all happened to me so young," she says. "It's very hard to go back to that time and be like, 'Did I want to do this?' It feels very foggy - it all feels very blurry."
Watson has acted in a few other films (a voiceover in 2008's "The Tale of Despereaux" and the 2007 BBC film "Ballet Shoes") but she has spent most of her spare time throughout "Potter" - and this is very Hermione-like - studying.
"I would have exploded if I hadn't had school to ground me and focus me," says Watson.
She plans to study literature and art, but she has also shown interest in fashion.
The bemused Grint - whom "Azkaban" director Alfonso Cuaron once said was the one most likely to become a star - remains clearly grounded, (even if he's used his earnings to purchase a hovercraft). That playfulness is perhaps an essential quality to Grint, who was never inclined to view acting as a job.
"I don't think I ever really made the connection of it being a career," he says. "It was just something that was fun to do. In the early ones, I don't think I took the acting too seriously. I just read the lines and got on with it. Over the years, you start to take it more seriously with different directors coming in."
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