My grandfather is brilliant. His name is Nigel Anstey, and he’s a geophysicist by trade. An eminent geophysicist, I might add, with a long list of awards and even an award named after him. When the time came to head off on location to film Philosopher’s Stone, and I needed a chaperone to accompany me, Grandpa got the gig. Mum couldn’t leave her job yet again, so my grandmother Wendy came down to help her with the house, while Grandpa and I hit the road.
With his big grey beard, my grandfather looks like Darwin or, if you prefer, like a wise old wizard, which is why, when Chris Columbus first saw him on the staircase at Leavesden Studios while he was chaperoning me to hair and make-up, he thought he’d make a fantastic Hogwarts professor.
INT. THE STAIRCASE, LEAVESDEN STUDIOS. DAY.
An elderly bearded gentleman escorts a scrappy blond kid to the hair and make-up department. They encounter Chris Columbus, who stops for a moment, blinks twice and inclines his head.
(with the enthusiasm of an American film director)
Hey, have you read the book?
GRAMPS
(with the reserve of a British academic)
I have.
COLUMBUS
You’d be a great wizard! Ever thought of acting?
GRAMPS
I have not.
COLUMBUS
Well we’d love to have you at Hogwarts! Would you consider it?
A beat.
GRAMPS
I shall.
It was unheard of for a family member of the cast to have a cameo in the films. My grandfather was the exception. In the first film, look for him at the far right of the professors’ table the first time the students enter the Great Hall, or when Professor Quirrell announces that there’s a troll in the dungeon, or sitting next to Lee Jordan during the first Quidditch match. He also had an uncanny resemblance to Richard Harris, so was often used as Dumbledore’s body double to line up shots. However, his influence over the film extended to more than some brief cameos in front of the camera.
My grandmother enjoys stories about fairies, spirits, magic, ghosts and goblins. I’ve inherited that passion from her. My grandfather, on the other hand, is an arch-scientist. He’s slow, methodical and very rational. My brothers and I used to play chess with him, and he would repeatedly wipe the floor with us, although he insisted on taking the full five minutes between moves. We lost out of boredom half the time. But for all his rationalism, he has a huge passion for the arts. He loves opera, classical and contemporary music, theatre, poetry and film. So he was, I think, pleased to be a part of the film, and pleased to help me prepare for the role.
I had a tendency to stumble when I spoke. My words would run into each other out of sheer enthusiasm and I even started to develop a slight stammer. My grandfather taught me to slow my speech down. To articulate clearly and precisely. It’s an important lesson for any young actor, but my grand-father furnished me with more than just generic advice. He was instrumental in developing one of Draco’s most distinctive characteristics: his sneer.
Draco would be nothing without his sneer, so he insisted I needed to practise it. We sat down in front of a mirror in a little bed and breakfast on location, trying to get it just so. He told me to imagine that I was smiling about something terrible. If the smile’s too big, it’s too happy. So he made sure it was small and slimy. Once we got that, he taught me to lift and flare my nostrils, as if smelling something disgusting. “Perfect,” he said. “Now do it with one nostril.” And finally, he encouraged me to channel into my sneer the frustration I felt at being the youngest, smallest, weakest sibling. There was plenty of frustration to work with! Every younger sibling feels hard-done-by, and if Draco could treat the rest of the cast the way I felt my brothers sometimes treated me, I’d surely be doing something right.
I did what he said. I sat in front of the mirror and I remembered all the times my brothers had called me a maggot and a runt. I remembered all the times they’d hogged the remote control and never let me get a look-in. I remembered the time Jink was winding me up while we were playing on the fourth-hand pool table my dad had picked up from Dorking car boot sale. I’d picked up my cue and hurled it at him like a javelin. Very selfishly he ducked, and the javelin flew straight through, and shattered, the glass panels in our back door.
Of course, my brothers will always be my best friends, and my home was nothing like Malfoy Manor, but a happy, fun, loving place. Draco is the product of a dark, abusive family, and I’m a product of a loving one. But those sessions with my grandfather in front of the mirror taught me something important about the craft of acting. An actor brings something of themselves to a part, working with elements of his or her own life and fashioning them into something different. I’m not Draco. Draco’s not me. But the dividing line is not black and white. It’s painted in shades of grey.