Harry Potter has been around for what seems like ages, and if you're a hot-blooded human being with a heart and feelings, you've probably seen all the movies several times. I mean, these movies are pretty much a staple of all of our childhoods and they're good enough to keep revisiting again and again. Even so, there may be some things about the filming of the movies themselves that you may not have known about.
After filming eight whole movies, there are bound to be a lot of interesting tidbits about the making of them. These movies are huge, after all, and there was so much going on that there are a lot of things that most people don't know — there's almost too much information about Harry Potter to know all of it!
20 Draco's Best Line Was Improvised
Like most of the iconic lines in film, this line from Draco was never meant to be in the movie. Tom Felton just forgot his line, so he filled the silence with, "I didn't know you could read," and changed the game forever. I don't even want to know what line he was supposed to say because the one that actually happened is so perfect for the character of Draco.
Goyle's supposed to be pretty stupid, but for his own best friend to question his intelligence that much is such a Draco move. What makes it even better is the face Draco makes in the last panel, where he looks fairly impressed by this new revelation.
I can believe that Goyle can read, but I can also believe that he rarely ever does it.
19 The Kids Did Their Homework On Set
As they say, some of the best acting isn't acting at all, but just doing what you would normally do. This tactic was pretty genius, as it killed two birds with one stone. On one hand the kids would look like they're concentrating more on homework, since they actually were concentrating. On the other hand, they would actually get their homework done, which I can imagine would be hard to do as a child actor. Let's be real, most normal kids have a hard time getting their work done on time, and I can't imagine how much time management you would need to have as a child actor to get everything done, since there's just too much going on all over the place. It's important to do your homework, kids!
18 They Were Perfectly Casted
Sometimes actors play characters that are completely different from their actual selves, but there are other times when actors are almost perfectly typecasted and this is one of those times.
There is nothing more Hermione than writing an extensive 16-page paper about the character she's playing — it would be more Hermione to make it single spaced and not double spaced, like how a normal person would do it. Harry would definitely do the assignment, but do the bare minimum because for someone who is supposed to save the world, he's quite an average guy. Ron, on the other hand, doesn't do his work very often, so it's kind of perfect that Rupert never turned in an essay because there's a good chance that Ron wouldn't turn in that essay either. They were meant to play these characters.
17 The Seven Harrys Scene Was A Nightmare
The biggest difference between books and movies is that books don't require visuals while movies pretty much strictly rely on them, and it's even worse when you're trying to make a movie about a magical world. While it's easy to write out a scene with seven Harrys, showing it in a believable way is very tough. The crew managed to do it successfully, but it wasn't without some blood, sweat, and tears. Most scenes take a couple of different takes to make the perfect cut, but 90 takes is just a wild number — and that's 90 for just one shot, not even the whole scene.
I hope that whoever was in charge of putting all of this together got a raise or something because this takes a lot of attention to detail, time, and a lot of skill.
16 They Couldn't Match All The Book's Descriptions
Being a true Harry Potter fan by reading the books way too many times, there are some details that I noticed were never transferred to the movie version. The first one is the complete absence of Peeves (which is a tragedy in my opinion) and how some of the physical descriptions of some of the characters in the book aren't exactly how the actors look in the movie.
The biggest controversy is that Harry is supposed to have his mother's green eyes, but just taking a quick look at Harry in the movies shows that he has blue eyes. Hermione is also supposed to have buck teeth but the movie shows Hermione with normal teeth. It turns out that they tried giving Daniel Radcliffe green contacts, but his eyes reacted to it and the false teeth prevented Emma from speaking properly. Instead of trying to get every detail exactly to the books, they just decided to skip some of the physical attributes.
15 It Took 40 Cats To Make Umbridge's Plates
Everything about Umbridge is terrible, but those cat plates are kind of an exception. I mean who doesn't like a bunch of plates of cats moving around doing cute cat things? It gets even better when you find out how these plates came to be on the big screen, since magic is not actually the answer.
There were about 200 plates made for the film, and there were about 40 cat models to pose for different looks. Some of the plates were empty to show the cats that "went away" since that's a thing that can happen in pictures in this universe. Just think about that shoot, though, just a whole bunch of cats wearing bows and doing cute things. Even though the cats in the books were described as looking "foul" there's no way to make a real-life cat not look absolutely adorable.
14 Daniel Radcliffe Went Through 160 Prop Glasses
While in the Wizarding World a pair of broken glasses can be easily fixed with a few flicks of the wand and a Reparo spell, but in the real world things are not so simple. Once a pair of glasses is broken, they're pretty much done with. There are a lot of action sequences in the Harry Potter series, so it's no surprise to know that Daniel may have broken Harry's glasses a few times. There were also eight movies, so the amount of glasses casualties really racked up over time — all the way up to 160. That seems like a horrendously large number, but that's just the price you have to pay for quality cinema. I mean, the budgets for the movies were so large that a few, or a hundred, new prop glasses don't seem like that big of an expense.
13 There Was A 'British Only' Casting Rule
J.K. Rowling had her hands fairly deep in the production of the movies, and one of her main requests was to make sure that all the actors were British. The rule was enforced hard enough that even His Greatness, Robin Williams was rejected for the role of Hagrid. The 'British only' rule also made casting Harry difficult, since it was hard to find someone of that age with those physical attributes who wanted to act, especially since Britain only has like, five actors to begin with. The only exception to this casting rule was Verne Troyer (Mini Me) who played Griphook. He wasn't trusted to make a good British accent so all of his lines were dubbed over later. Of course they'd have to break those rules once it got to Goblet of Fire, though.
12 Myrtle's Actor Is Way Older Than She Looks
It always weirds me out when older people play teens, but sometimes the actors are way older than you'd ever expect. Take for example the person playing Moaning Myrtle, who was 37 years old at the time of filming. I'm pretty sure Myrtle was supposed to be like, 16 when she died. The age difference between the actor and the character is so great that I'm pretty sure the actor is closer to the age of Myrtle if she were still alive than to her ghost's age. I guess that's because she's all pale and ghost-like, a youthful look isn't what the casting directors were going for, but I am also just kind of confused as to how someone who is close to being middle aged ended up playing a dead high school student.
11 14 Cars Were Crashed For The Whomping Willow Scene
If you thought that 160 broken glasses was a large expense, just wait until you find out what it took to make the great Whomping Willow scene in Chamber of Secrets. It turns out that a total of 14 Ford Anglias were crashed in the making of the scene. That's 14 whole cars! Even though the vehicle in question doesn't look like the nicest or newest model on the streets at the time, having 14 of these babies on set just to crush in a giant Death Tree seems like it might be a little costly. Even so, I bet it would have been pretty fun to be the person in charge with demolishing the cars that many times, since destruction is very fun and is always the best part of the job.
10 Hagrid Had Some Beard Problems
Having a beautiful, majestic beard is both a privilege and a responsibility. Hagrid's beard is iconic and it's not a look that most people can put off. I bet that Robbie Coltrane was proud of his bushy Hagrid beard, but it also can be a great inconvenience. With a lot of beard, there's also a lot of space for things to get caught in it. I can imagine that the mini fan getting caught in it would be painful, and the fruit bat would have been just a shocker. I don't know much of the gritty details of these beard encounters, but I hope that they were able to remove these objects without having to cut much of the beard itself. If he had to cut it, that beard would probably look weird not like the beautiful beard it's supposed to be.
9 The Knight Bus Filming Got Complicated
Even though Harry Potter is practically a national treasure, filming the Prisoner of Azkaban created a few problems for regular London residents. They needed to film the Knight Bus on a real Muggle road, since that's what goes on in the story, so they had to shut down some London roads to shoot the scenes.
For eight separate nights (over several weeks) the streets of London were shut down so that they could film and navigate the triple-decker monstrosity. A vehicle of that shape and size probably couldn't realistically drive that fast in real life, so they just sped up the footage of the bus driving at a normal speed. There was also the problem that the bus was too tall to go under bridges, so the third level was removable for such encounters.
8 Bagel Shenanigans On Set
That's one of the major problems of filming movies about teens with actual teen actors is that these teens are going to act like teens. Maybe that's one of the reasons why they film movies and television shows with adults playing kids because at least the adults may act a little more professional on set. While professionalism is great, it sure makes things less fun and there's something about the Harry Potter set that just looks like fun to me. It also seems like a very Neville and Luna thing to do — to just roll bagels to each other while other people are doing hard work. I wonder if the editors left any of the bagels in the background or if they worked very hard to make sure no bagel shenanigans are shown on screen.
7 Rupert Grint Got Kicked Out When Emma Kissed Daniel
I've never really been in a lot of acting situations, but I can imagine that having to kiss your best bud in front of a bunch of people—even for the sake of acting—would be very embarrassing. Apparently when filming the Horcrux kissing scene between Harry and Hermione in Deathly Hallows Part 1, Emma was very embarrassed by it and had to kick Rupert out for laughing too hard during the takes.
While this whole scene is supposed to make Ron jealous and upset after seeing the love of his life kiss someone else, the real-life person behind the character thought this situation was absolutely hilarious. He sure has a way to completely ruin the serious mood in a room. Honestly, though, seeing Harry and Hermione together for real would be really weird.
6 Evanna Lynch Handmade Luna's Raddish Earrings
One of my favorite things about learning about the Harry Potter cast is seeing how much some of the actors resemble their characters — and Evanna Lynch reminds me of Luna Lovegood in some of the best ways. One of those ways is the fact that Evanna made her own beaded earrings in the shape of Dirigible Plums, a mystical plant that looks like a radish. Luna is known for her interesting fashion choices, and it's great to see that the actor behind her is right on board with it. Wearing a plain set of radishes as earrings is cool, but having them made out of beads gives them a kind of sparkly flair that is perfect for Luna. Because of this fact, many people were inspired to make their own radish-looking accessories.
5 Daniel Radcliffe Never Learned How To Dance
In preparation for the Yule Ball, the cast was trained for three weeks on how to properly ballroom dance — everyone except for Daniel, that is. Since Daniel played Harry, the main character who is pretty much in every scene in the movie, he only had four days in his schedule to fit in some dance lessons before filming the ball scene. If you look closely, you'll see that all the dance scenes with Harry are filmed from the waist up to hide the fact that his feet had no idea what they were doing. This isn't the worst thing to happen, though, since it's pretty true to the books to have Harry terrible at dancing. It's a shame though that Daniel missed out on some pretty good life skills.
4 Snape's Costume Is One Of The Only Ones That Never Changed
Most of the other characters went through some pretty drastic costume changes, but Severus Snape's iconic black and drab robes stayed constant along with his terrible personality. I mean, if a costume fits a character perfectly, why fix it? Technically the students of Hogwarts are supposed to have standard uniforms, but going with the times, it's pretty easy to believe that by their third year they'd ditch the robes and hat for some more stylish garments. Stylish was never a word that could be used to describe Snape, though, so I can see him wearing the same drab thing every day. Just imagine Snape's wardrobe — it would be a whole rack of the exact same thing. I'd like to think that he'd wash his clothes frequently, but he is kind of a greasy dude.
3 Many Owls Played Hedwig
Hedwig is one of the most beloved characters in the entire series, so it's good to know how many snowy owls were graced with the privilege of playing Hogwarts' sweetheart.
There were seven owls in total and their names are: Gizmo, Kasper, Oops, Swoops, Oh Oh, Elmo, and Bandit. They were all such beautiful and majestic creatures and they were some of my favorite parts of the movies. I can imagine that working with owls might not be the easiest thing to do on a movie set, but eventually these majestic birds did their jobs well enough to make it on the screen. Another fun fact is that Daniel Radcliffe had to wear extra leather protection under his costume to prevent his arm from getting wrecked by those extra-strong talons.
2 Harry Melling Almost Lost His Role As Dudley
Weight loss is usually something that is celebrated, especially in the acting world, but for Harry Melling, who played the resident big boy Dudley Dursley, it almost cost him his job. Unlike Melling, Dudley was supposed to remain fat throughout the seven years that the Harry Potter books take place in, and it's a big enough plot point for him to have to be fat.
In the time between Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, Melling lost enough weight to not be considered a heavy boy anymore. Instead of recasting him, though, they decided to go the fat suit route. Except for Dumbledore (which was kind of a necessity), the Harry Potter franchise likes to keep the same actors for their roles, which is nice. It's like the best of both worlds.
1 The Movie Broke A 100-Year-Old Rule
In the first movie for the Restricted Section scene, they filmed in the Duke Humphrey's building in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. They have a centuries-long rule that no flame can go near the library, and for good reason. There are a lot of extremely old and priceless books, after all, and old books are quite flammable. In the Harry Potter world, though, they don't care about the age of old books but they do care about using actual fire as their only light source, so the library made the exception for the filming of the movie to allow a flame-lit lantern on the premises. That means that a centuries old rule had just been broken for a movie. Harry Potter is just that important to risk lighting a bunch of books on fire.