By Brian Boone
It’s been 25 years since filming began on the first movie based on the phenomenally popular Harry Potter books. The actors who portrayed the fictional wizards and witches are forever associated with those roles — so it’s odd to think about what could’ve been. If you’re heading to a movie theater to watch the re-released Harry Potter films, consider these actors who almost got cast.
• Director Chris Columbus auditioned more than 300 actors to play the three main kid wizards: Harry, Hermione, and Ron. Liam Aiken, best known at the time for Columbus’s Stepmom, was actually cast as Harry, until books author J.K. Rowling said no. She had final approval on every actor choice and wanted a fully British cast — Aiken was American. When Steven Spielberg was briefly under consideration to direct, he also got a veto from Rowling over his choice for Harry: Haley Joel Osment, fresh off of The Sixth Sense.
• The first choice to play adversarial professor of potions Severus Snape: Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction, Rob Roy). Filmmakers offered him the role but he turned it down because he had a scheduling conflict. He was already booked to star in a Planet of the Apes remake, and that project sounded like more to the actor.
• In the second film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, wildly arrogant celebrity wizard Gilderoy Lockhart takes a professorship at Hogwarts. Real-life handsome celebrity Hugh Grant signed on for the role and even dyed his hair blonde to prepare for filming. But then he had to do reshoots for the movie Two Weeks Notice, which ate up his schedule to the point where he had to drop out and cede the role to Kenneth Branagh.
• Richard Harris played Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films before his death. Producers needed to recast the role for the remainder of the series and they first went to Ian McKellen. However, he’d just played a similar character — the old, white-bearded wizard Gandalf — in three Lord of the Rings movies. Nor did he want to replace Harris, who right before his death publicly called McKellen a bad actor.
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• Despite being British and 29 years old at the time filming began on Goblet of Fire, Kate Winslet nearly landed the part of French teenage witch Fleur Delacour. She lost out as well as a chance later in the series to play the small but pivotal role of witch Helena Ravenclaw. Winslet’s agent didn’t even show her the offer before he turned it down on her behalf.
• In 2008, internet rumors suggested that Oscar-nominated Naomi Watts would join the Harry Potter series as Narcissa Malfoy, the politically connected mother of Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy. Watts publicly lobbied producers to cast her, but they never made an offer, choosing to cast Peaky Blinders star Helen McCrory instead.
• Fourth film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was filmed in 2004 but takes place in 1994, when bands like Radiohead and Pulp were very popular. The book and movie feature a wizard prom sequence in which wizard band the Weird Sisters play their hit, “Do the Hippogriff.” Producers enlisted members of Radiohead and Pulp to play the Weird Sisters and write and perform an actual “Do the Hippogriff.” This was all after a contemporary band backed out. Franz Ferdinand, the hottest U.K. band around in 2004, had to honor its touring commitments.