7

THE POTTER AUDITIONS

or

WHEN DRACO MET HERMIONE

Until the age of eleven, I attended a slightly posh private boys’ school called Cranmore. It was no Hogwarts—forget about turrets and lakes and great halls. But it was a very academic place. A place where it was cool to be top of the class and you were respected for good grades rather than, say, bunking off to lark about on a film set. My grandfather helped fund my place. He was an academic—more about him later—and instead of saving up for a college fund, he helped put all four boys through early private education. The idea was to drill in some academia while we were young and impressionable.

If I have any academic abilities—basic arithmetic, the idea of reading being something enjoyable—they derive entirely from those years at Cranmore. By the time my stint at private school was almost up, however, my attention was beginning to wander. I distinctly remember, during my last couple of months, that there would be a half-hour period after lunch when the teacher would sometimes read us a story out loud. One day he chose some book about a boy wizard living under the stairs. Truth to tell, it wouldn’t much have mattered what he was reading, I would have had the same reaction, which was: give it a rest, mate! A boy wizard? Not my cup of tea.

When I was eleven I changed school. My new school was closer to home and a good deal more down to earth. It was called Howard of Effingham, and if Cranmore taught me my three Rs, Howard taught me how to socialise with anyone and everyone. For the first time, I saw students talk back to teachers—practically unheard of at Cranmore. I saw kids smoking on school premises and girls being sent home because their skirts were too short. I had no idea what the future held for me, of course, but to this day I think my life could have been very different if I hadn’t switched schools. Private schools and film sets are both out-of-the-ordinary environments. Howard of Effingham gave me a healthy dose of normality.

Not that the transition was easy. For the first week as a Year 7, everybody had to wear the uniform of whatever school they’d just come from. This meant most kids were in the same garb: a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. For me and only one other—my mate Stevie—it meant a maroon cap, a blazer and socks pulled up to my knees. In short, it meant looking like a complete spanner, and there was no shortage of people to tell me so. It didn’t make for a straightforward introduction, but looking back I was glad of the change. I’d grown up thinking that the way to get on in the world was by being a brainbox. I was beginning to learn that a far more important and effective skill is the ability to communicate with people from all walks of life. Being placed in a more normal environment would help me do that. It would become even more of an advantage as other parts of my life became less than normal.

Up until that point I’d got away with being a cheeky little boy. In fact, I’d more than got away with it—it had landed me film roles. There comes a time, though, as adolescence hits, that cheekiness develops into something else. I became a bit of a pain in the arse. A bit of a reprobate. Don’t get me wrong, I lived in a pleasant part of Surrey and as reprobates went, I was quite a posh one. Really, I was just doing my best to fit into my new environment. Just doing my best to be ordinary.

And I was ordinary. Sure, I had a bit of acting experience. I’d done some commercials and a couple of films. But nobody cared about that. My new friends were much more interested in skateboarding, amateur pyrotechnics and sharing a cigarette behind the bike sheds. I don’t think I even really cared that much about filming. It was a fun sideline, but nothing more. I certainly had no intention for acting to become anything more serious. If I never appeared in another film again, that would be okay.

And maybe that would happen. I was developing a bit of a swagger. A slight arrogance. Surely nobody would want to give a part to a kid displaying those sorts of qualities, would they?

I had no idea, when I was first asked by my agents to audition for a film called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, that it would be any different in terms of scale to the jobs I’d done previously. In my mind it was another Borrowers: a relatively high-budget film with lots of children and, if I played my cards right, a part for me. But if I didn’t get a part? That was okay too. It wasn’t the be-all and end-all. There was a good chance something else would come along.

It soon became clear, however, from the auditioning process at least, that there were differences. These were open auditions. I’d been asked by my agents to go along but the vast majority of kids had turned up because they loved the Harry Potter books. I think I was perhaps the only kid at the whole audition who had no idea what they were or how much they meant to people. I’d certainly long forgotten those after-lunch story sessions about the boy wizard.

The auditioning process was longer and more drawn out than anything I’d experienced before. Sure, there were no trips to Hollywood, but the casting was distinctly more involved than usual. There were thousands of kids to audition. It took a long time to give each one their individual chance of success. It must have been exhausting for the casting team. I approached it with my usual lack of overt enthusiasm. Whereas all the other kids were wildly excited about the prospect of being in a film, and clearly knew the book inside out, I was the complete opposite.

They stood thirty of us in a line. One of the adults—I would later find out that this was the director, Chris Columbus—went down the line asking each of us which part of the book we were most excited to see on screen. I remember being underwhelmed by the question. As the responses came, clear and certain—Hagrid! Fang! Quidditch!—I remember standing there wondering if I could go home soon. It was only when it came to the turn of the kid next to me that I realised not only had I given the question zero thought, I had absolutely no idea what anybody was talking about. Who was Hagrid? What was a Quidditch? My neighbour announced that he was most excited to see Gringotts, and I thought to myself, What the hell are they? Some kind of flying animal, maybe?

There was no time to find out. Chris Columbus turned to me. “What bit of the book are you most looking forward to seeing, Tom?”

I stalled. There was an awkward silence in the audition room. I gave my most winning smile and pointed at the Gringotts guy. “Same as him, mate!” I said. I made a little flapping motion with my arms. “Can’t wait to see those Gringotts!”

There was a heavy pause.

“You mean you’re looking forward to seeing Gringotts… the bank?” Columbus said.

“Oh yeah,” I blagged quickly. “The bank! Can’t wait!”

He gave me a long look. He knew I was bullshitting. I knew he knew I was bullshitting. He nodded, then continued down the line to a flurry of enthusiastic and informed responses.

Ah well, I thought. You win some, you lose some.

But the audition wasn’t over. Columbus announced that we were going to take a break. “You guys just hang out here,” he said. “Nobody’s going to be filming you. Just do what you want to do.” It was, of course, a bit of a scam. The cameras were rolling and a huge fluffy boom mic hung over the room. I’d been on sets before, I could tell what was going on and I felt pretty cocky about it. I certainly didn’t feel inclined to fall into their trap.

A young, curious girl approached me. She had brown frizzy hair and couldn’t have been more than nine years old. She pointed at the boom mic. “What’s that?” she asked.

I glanced up at it, world-weary and slightly full of myself. I might even have sneered a little. “What’s what?”

“That?”

“It means they’re recording us. Obviously.” I turned my back on her and wandered off, leaving the little girl to gaze wide-eyed around the room. I later found out that her name was Emma Watson. It was her first time in a film environment. I don’t know whether anybody overheard our little exchange, but if they did, they’d definitely have seen a little Slytherin in me.

The final part of the audition was a one-on-one with Columbus on his own. It’s hard to audition a kid; realistically, how good are they going to be if you simply hand them a monologue and give them the stage? Columbus had a talent, though, for bringing out what he wanted to see in us. We rehearsed a short scene where Harry is asking Hagrid about a dragon’s egg. Real dragons’ eggs being hard to come by, the prop was an ordinary chicken’s egg. The scene was simple. We rehearsed it once and then they rolled cameras.

He delicately started to pass the egg towards me but, just as he was about to hand it over, he purposely dropped it. The egg smashed on the floor. Dragon everywhere. He watched for my reaction. I think most kids would have felt the need to say something, or would have been alarmed at the turn the scene had taken. I just giggled, little sod that I was.

My cheekiness—or cockiness, call it what you will—was evidently no barrier to progress. I was recalled several times after that first day. I read at least a couple of times for Harry, and also for Ron. This time round there were a few simple lines from the film, but they meant nothing to me as I still really had no idea who this wizard under the stairs was, or his ginger-haired mate. They gave me round glasses to wear, and put a scar on my forehead. I spent the entire day at the studio with others on the shortlist. At one stage they even dyed my hair Ron-coloured, though happily I avoided another permed ginger mullet. I started to entertain the idea that perhaps it would be pretty cool to play this Harry Potter kid…

But then the auditions were over and I didn’t hear anything for weeks.

Ah well. No news is good news, right?

Wrong.

Our yearly family holidays took place at Eurocamp in France. Mum, Dad and the four Felton boys would pile into our old blue Transit van that had a regular tendency to break down halfway along the autoroute. Those were the best holidays of my life, no question. Fresh baguettes. Discovering Nutella. I remember hanging out around the tents that summer, idly playing with my yoyo while my mum read the newspaper. She called me over to look at a photograph.

The picture showed two boys and a girl. One of the boys had dark hair. The other had a ginger mop. The girl had long brown frizzy hair and I immediately recognised her as the kid to whom I’d been less than charitable at the audition. The headline read: “Harry Potter Cast Revealed.”

I made an outward show of nonchalance. “Oh well,” I said. “Next time.” And I wandered off to carry on playing with my yoyo. I won’t lie, there was a twinge of disappointment. But I mastered it quickly and ten minutes later I’d moved on. Maybe it would have been fun to be a wizard, but it wasn’t going to happen, so I might as well enjoy my holiday and play with my yoyo in the sunshine.

And then, of course, I was recalled. They didn’t want me for Harry or Ron (or Hermione). They had another part in mind. Draco Malfoy, the bad guy. Apparently.

I’d like to tell you that the twelve-year-old Tom was inspired to squirrel himself away with some Harry Potter books as a result of being involved with the auditions, but he wasn’t. It helped, I think. The filmmakers weren’t so much looking for actors; they were looking for people who were these characters. With Daniel, Rupert and Emma, they nailed it. They pretty much are—or at least they were—Harry, Ron and Hermione. And while I like to think Draco and I were not exactly alike, there was surely something about my general nonchalance that caught the eye. Would Draco have gone home to mug up, Hermione-like, on Harry Potter books? I think not. Would he have blagged his way through a question about which character he was most excited to see on screen? Possibly.

You had to act the part, but more importantly you had to look the part. They decided that they needed to see what I looked like with white hair. It meant the first of the many bleachings that would become a staple in my life for the next ten years. It took a lot longer than I expected to establish my first ever Malfoy hairdo. You can’t just go from one colour to another, especially when going lighter. It’s a matter of applying layers of peroxide and then topping up with tint. The peroxide burned my head first time round. It felt like fire ants were nibbling at your scalp. Agony. Then they said they’d have to do it again and I begged them not to. My plea fell on deaf ears: I was straight back in the hairdresser’s chair. It initially took six or seven rounds over a matter of days to achieve the colour. It was important for the filmmakers that the colouring was just right. They needed to see how the Malfoy blond looked next to the Weasley ginger or the Granger brown. I spent hours doing camera tests next to swatches of different colours to give them an idea of how I might look in dark Hogwarts robes, for example, or green and silver Slytherin Quidditch gear.

And they needed to know how I would appear on screen next to Harry, Ron and Hermione. The three principals were there for one of my last auditions so that they could see how our colouring, our heights and our general demeanours offset against each other. We’d reached the point in the audition process where we needed to read a scene together—there was no messing about with chicken eggs now—so we worked on Harry and Draco’s first encounter.

I’m a year older than Rupert, two years older than Daniel and nearly three years older than Emma. As we moved through the films, that age difference became less important. But there’s a big difference between a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old and my recollection is that I did feel much older. These first moments were as awkward as any first meeting between kids. We were all quite shy (Rupert less so…). Off camera, I was probably a little aloof towards these younger kids. I was the product of a family with three older brothers, remember, and more than a little of their adolescent standoffishness had rubbed off on me. No doubt some of that transferred to the camera tests. Would it help me get the part, though?

A week or two later, I was in the garden of my friend Richie’s house, playing football. His mum Janice shouted out of the window, “Tom, your mum’s on the phone!”

I was a bit irritated. The game wasn’t going my way. I ran into the house and impatiently picked up the phone, huffing and puffing. “Yeah?”

“You got it!”

“What?”

“You got the part!”

“What part?”

“Draco!”

There was a moment of silence while I let it sink in.

“Cool,” I said. “This should be fun.”

Then I said, “Um, can I go now, Mum? I’m 2–1 down.”

I’d like to say there were fireworks, but really I just wanted to get back to the footy. I returned to the garden. Richie was there, holding the ball impatiently. Very rarely did I feel that I wanted to tell any of my friends about what I was doing in this other part of my life. The indifference I encountered at Crazy Tots years before had taught me that they were unlikely to be remotely interested. But on this occasion, I did feel the need. “What’s up?” Richie said.

“Not much. I just got this part. Should be fun.”

“What is it?”

“Harry Potter. I’m playing the baddie.”

“Harry who?”

“Don’t worry about it. Are we finishing this game or what?”

I lost that game, but I won a part.

And so it all began.