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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Q. In an ideal world - and let your fantasies run riot
- who would you take or like to take to your own Yule ball?
A: I watched Garden State
quite recently and fell in love with Natalie Portman so it would
maybe be Natalie Portman or Scarlett Johansson or someone like
that. You said let your fantasies run wild, so that’s what
I’ve done.
Q. How do you feel about growing up with your character
and what are you doing after the films have finished?
A: It’s been an odd five years but it’s been
great. We’ve got a while before the films end and we’re
not all absolutely confirmed as doing them all. We’re all
definitely doing the fifth but after that who knows? In a way
growing up with Harry makes it easier to act in each of the films
because firstly I’ve been through all the stuff that he’s
going through, like the hormones relatively recently, so it’s
quite fresh in my mind and it doesn’t stop after you’ve
turned 14 and then I suppose it’s been made easier by the
fact I’ve been doing it since I was 11. You get to know
the character so well that it makes it easier to act in the long
run.
Q: What strategies have you developed over the years
when each of the new books has been published. Are you just like
every one else of your age queuing up to get it and see what has
become of your characters? And what are your thoughts for the
final instalment?
A. Actually I didn’t queue up, we ordered
it from Amazon I think so it came, sort of, on the day…
because I think you get people queuing until midnight and I think
I might have been signing things for the next six hours if I’d
actually been in the queue.
As for the second part of that question, I think it was the third
film press conference, I sort of alluded to that fact that that
there’s a possibility of Harry dying, and of course the
headline the next day was ‘Daniel says Harry’s dead!’
And so I do maintain that that might be a possibility, but where
would I like to see it?
It's a dangerous thing for me to say…’Dan wants Harry
dead’… it wouldn’t be good, but I think maybe
a slightly more exotic location… to get us out of Leavesden
studios by a few thousand miles, and maybe to…Thailand or
the Caribbean?
Q. What are your favourite bands and records at the moment?
A. Well, music’s something I’m quite passionate
about, so if I go on don’t be afraid to speak up and say
‘OK we’ve got enough bands now’! At the moment
there’s a new band who my friend got the album of…
I don’t think it’s out in England yet, but it's a
band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
The lead singer sounds a bit like David Burn, out of Talking Heads,
and it’s great.
And a lot of British bands like The Rakes, Dogs, Hard-Fi. The
Libertines are still fantastic but they are no more. Um, what
else? A couple of American bands: Louis XIV are good and We Are
Scientists.
Q. Can you please tell us what book you’re currently
reading and also your most embarrassing moment while filming Harry
Potter?
A: Well, the book I’m reading now is called Survivor
by Chuck Palahniuk… I always have a problem saying his last
name! He wrote Fight Club, but I’ve not actually read Fight
Club. This is the first one of his I’ve read.
And my most embarrassing moment would have had to have been the
dancing. I mean, I really enjoyed it, I had a really good time,
because the girl I was dancing with is called Shefali, and she’s
just incredibly cool - she’s completely mad, but brilliant,
and so we just had a really good time.
And I’d like to point out that most other people had a lot
more rehearsal at the dancing than me, and you’ll notice
Mike very kindly didn’t show anything below my waist. It’s
dancing from the waist up, so you never see my feet move, which
is quite a good thing. I really wanted to be good at it because
both my parents were amazing, competition winning dancers, and
I wanted those genes to.
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Q. Are you reconciled to
the fact that the books are coming to an end and that you’re
going to have to take other acting jobs quite soon? If so, what
your thoughts are in that direction?
A: Well, ‘reconciled’ makes it sound like
we’re not looking forward to it, I mean; I think we’re
all really excited about it.
I'm also doing a new film that's set in Australia. It’s
centred around four young Australian boys who have grown up in
a Catholic orphanage in the Outback. The orphanage comes into
some money via a donor and they send the boys for their birthdays,
they send them to the sea for a couple of weeks, and it’s
just about the time they spend there. It’s five and a half
weeks and no blue screen, and so it’s wonderful! And so
I think we’re all looking forward to going on to other things.
Q. How much do you think you have matured along with
your character and did you make many suggestions to the director
in terms of your own acting?
A: I think we’ve grown up in the normal way, not
the normal environment, but the normal way that kids going from
one age to the other would have done. I think there’s nothing
peculiar in the way we’ve matured but that’s probably
a question for David. I think in terms of suggestions to Mike,
we spoke up.
Q. Is it difficult leading normal teenage lives?
A. Some people find it quite hard to believe that we
can live normal lives and I can sort of see why. Some people refuse
to believe that we are telling the truth and think of us as liars
but we’re actually able to go out and things. It’s
often sensible to wear a hat, not one that draws attention so
not a cowboy hat, just a baseball cap pulled down or something.
But other than that we still go out, we still go to the cinema.
For me, I only feel famous about two days a year which is the
premieres. Having said that, it’s a possibility that that
may change when we’re 18 because maybe the paparazzi and
the photographers have been going slightly easy on us at this
point so that might change, but hope it continues.
Q. I read somewhere that you and Katie Leung were supposed
to kiss each other. Was that ever meant to happen, or did you
go off each other?
A: It was never planned. I mean in the book Harry and
Cho don’t actually kiss until the fifth one and so it was
never actually planned that it was going to be in this one. And
I really don’t think that we would have gone off each other
sufficiently to actually refuse to do the kiss! You know, it was
never even planned to happen. Were you ever aware of that?
Q. This is a very teenage movie; I think that teenagers
all over the world are going to enjoy it. But the scene in the
pool, what were you thinking when you were shooting that?
A: What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking ‘I’m
a 14-year-old boy wearing a pair of flesh coloured underwear’!
And they were being made by a very, very successful designer label
so I suppose the main thought was ‘Who is wearing these
in real life?’!
I don’t know, I suppose I was a bit self conscious. Originally
this thing was a lot longer; there was a lot more wading going
on around the bath. But you know, I suppose I was a bit self conscious
at first but after three takes or so you sort of get used to it
really.
Q. You have allowed Harry Potter to take over your life
for the last five years. What is the stand out memory for the
past five years?
A: I suppose for me two things, and one Emma’s
mentioned is seeing the finished product and seeing 11 months
of your life condensed into two and a half hours of what you’ve
achieved.
But the best one… my best friend is a guy on the set called
Will Steggle, and for me probably the best memory is meeting him
and just getting to know him and having him there as a friend.
Q. After wearing the same glasses for four years do you
have any plans to wear contacts for future films.
Daniel: I tried contacts in the first film because in
the book Harry’s eyes are supposed to be a brilliant green
and mine are much bluer than they should be. So we put green contact
lenses in but they were so excruciatingly painful that we had
to take them out. So I don’t think we’ll be going
back down the contact road if I can avoid it.
But one thing that I think Harry Potter has actually done, because
I used to wear glasses a lot, I don’t really need them now
apart from sometimes for reading, I think Harry Potter has actually
managed to make glasses have a kind of cool thing to them. JK
Rowling has stuck up for any person who has ever been called four
eyes or anything or ever been teased about it, JK Rowling has
made it really a cool thing. So I think that’s one of the
biggest gifts that Harry Potter has given to the world actually.
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