Harry Potter (film)/Trivia


 * Ability Over Appearance: The actors were frequently cast this way. Horace Slughorn, Dolores Umbridge and Gilderoy Lockhart were all played by actors who didn't quite match the physical description of their book counterparts (for instance, Slughorn is meant to be short and stout, but Jim Broadbent is over six feet tall), but who had the attitude down perfectly.
 * Acting for Two:
 * Warwick Davis plays Flitwick throughout the series (with a different look in the earlier films), the goblin bank teller in Stone, and is also Griphook in Deathly Hallows. Additionally, Flitwick's new look was originally meant to be a separate character. Basically, they cast Warwick Davis whenever they need someone very short.
 * In the first film, Ian Hart played Quirrell and provided the voice and motion capture for Voldemort (Richard Bremmer was not the voice, he portrayed Voldemort in the flashback to the death of Harry's parents).
 * Actor Allusion:
 * Dudley Dursley is played by Harry Melling. There is a brief moment in the first film, which was not in the book, in which Hagrid mistakes Dudley for Harry, to which Dudley responds that he's "not Harry."
 * Ralph Fiennes is playing a bigoted, sociopathic, totalitarian psychopath with zero compassion or humanity and who commands/leads an influential racist cult in a war-torn, politically unstable world... now, are we talking about Lord Voldemort or Amon Goeth? Notable given that the latter was Fiennes' big break in the film-making business.
 * Look at in The Half Blood Prince (3:00) and Hans Gruber's death in Die Hard(2:45). Nicely inverted, as the killed in one is the killer in the other.
 * In Deathly Hallows Part 1, the Power Trio ends up in a cafe that has a promotional poster for Equus on the wall.
 * It almost certainly was a coincidence rather than a deliberate allusion, but Michael Gambon, who took over as Dumbledore for the movie in which werewolf Remus Lupin first appears, himself played a werewolf in The Beast Must Die (1974).
 * All-Star Cast:
 * [Deep breath] Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, John Hurt, Julie Christie, Alan Rickman, Jason Isaacs, Kenneth Branagh, David Thewlis, Michael Gambon, Emma Thompson, Gary Oldman, Timothy Spall, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, John Cleese... [collapses from exhaustion]
 * Bill Nighy claimed he was excited to be playing Rufus Scrimgeour in the last movie because, if he hadn't, he would've been the only actor in England not to have shown up in the series at some point. Indeed, it is almost easier to note the British actors who have not appeared in the film.
 * As one reviewer noted, between all the supporting actors, you'd have a great production of Macbeth.
 * When making the first film, Columbus commented, "I put together a list of my dream cast. And every one of them said 'Yes.' That never happens."
 * Author Existence Failure: Or rather, Actor Existence Failure -- Richard Harris, between movies two and three.
 * Breakthrough Hit: Immediately after the release of this book, everyone knew about J. K. Rowling.
 * Dawson Casting: For the most part, an Averted Trope with the central Power Trio, and some of the other younger actors, especially in the early films. However, as the films were staggered further and further apart, the age differences between the cast and their characters grew. Emma Watson managed to avoid this completely, since she was actually younger than Hermione in the first book when she was cast. An Averted Trope again with Evanna Lynch as Luna in Order of the Phoenix.
 * Subverted with Tom Riddle, whose actor was 25 in Chamber of Secrets but was recast as a teenager of equal age in Half Blood Prince.
 * An especially Egregious example is the casting of Shirley Henderson, well into her thirties at the time, as Moaning Myrtle, the ghost of a Hogwarts student. (Of course, it's hard to tell with all that ghost make-up.)
 * Similarly, the casting of Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. Snape was a contemporary of Harry's parents, which means he should have been at most in his late thirties, more likely early-middle thirties (but conceivably as young as twenty-nine), at the start of the series.  Rickman was 55 when he was cast as Snape.
 * David Tennant plays Barty Crouch, Jr. both in the present day and in flashback. Present-day Crouch, Jr. is Tennant's real age, but in the flashback, Crouch Jr. is supposed to be about nineteen. Tennant does not look it at all.
 * Fan Nickname: Plenty, but in particular the group of Harry, Ron, and Hermione is often referred to as the Golden Trio. Voldemort also has plenty of variations on his name - Voldy, Voldypants, Moldywarts, Voldyshorts - to the point where Peeves actually uses "Voldy" in the last book.
 * The quill that Umbridge made Harry write with in detention in Order of the Phoenix lacks an official name, but is almost universally referred to as a blood quill.
 * The Other Darrin:
 * Most famously, Richard Harris and Michael Gambon as Dumbledore.
 * Throwaway characters tend to get recast after they get important, such as Parvati Patil, Angelina Johnson, Lavender Brown, Katie Bell, and Pansy Parkinson.
 * The character of Voldemort supplies two examples. The present-day Voldemort was first played by Richard Bremmer/Ian Hart and then by Ralph Fiennes. Sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle was played by Christian Coulson in the second film and by Frank Dillane in the sixth.
 * And unless that was an uncredited Ciaran Hinds having undergone mounds of plastic surgery in film five, it looks like this is happening to Aberforth in the final films.
 * The Fat Lady was played by Elizabeth Spriggs (film 1), and then by Dawn French (film 3).
 * Lavender's recasting especially sticks out, as she actually changed race for the sixth film -- she suddenly becomes Caucasian when she was previously black. In the books, her race was ambiguous.
 * Romance on the Set: Jamie Campbell Bower met Bonnie Wright, they began dating, and they are now engaged.
 * Too Soon: Supposedly, in Deathly Hallows Part 2, a post-Voldemort sequence was filmed for that was much closer to the book (i.e. a mixture of jubilation and grief) but was cut after Americans infamously celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden. Instead the atmosphere is much more bleak and bittersweet.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * Rik Mayall was originally cast as Peeves in the movie, but ultimately was cut.
 * Half Blood Prince would have seen a scene where Dumbledore reminisces about a witch he had a romance with. J.K. Rowling sent back the script with "HE'S GAY" written on that part of the script. The scene was promptly cut.