About to turn 30, Rupert Grint discuss the end of Harry Potter

In an interview to the British newspaper The Guardian, Rupert Grint, who is about to turn 30, discussed the beginning of his career and the end of the Harry Potter series. Over the movies, the actor says that he has become more and more like Ron Weasley. “The line between Ron and me became thinner with each film and I think we became virtually the same person”, he affirms.

The end of an era
“Finishing Harry Potter was surreal. It was a very strange feeling but it came at the right time. I don’t want to liken it to coming out of prison because it wasn’t a prison, but it did feel like stepping out of an institution. […] I didn’t really know what was happening. I felt a bit lost. It was nice to breathe the fresh air. […] Filming Harry Potter was a massive sacrifice; working from such a young age for such long periods and I definitely remember thinking during one extended break, ‘This whole thing is so all consuming, do I really want to go back? Maybe it’s just not for me.’ I guess I was probably just being a teenager.”

“[After Harry Potter ], “Things have never been the same.”– Rupert Grint

From shyness to the spotlight
“[After Harry Potter] Things have never been the same”, says Rupert Grint, who had to leave school, since the children had classes on the filming set.

A shy kid, he always liked to act, because of the possibility of hiding himself in a character. But what drove him to audition for Harry Potter was his love for books. “For the first few Harry Potter films I was living the dream”, he recalls.

Around the third or fourth movie, he started worrying about the tabloids. “It felt like people were waiting for me to go off the rails, but it was never going to happen”, he says. “We filmed the whole thing in this very intense bubble in Watford not Hollywood, so we didn’t have the chance to discover drugs, or anything like that.”

Turning 30
To Grint, turning 30 is a strange feeling, “I’m just going to go with the flow, keep playing interesting characters and see what happens”, he said. The actor considers having kids soon, and when asked if he would name any of them Ron, he denies. “It’s quite a good name, but probably not. And Grint’s a tough name to pair a one-syllable first name with, [Ron].”

TV series
Currently, the actor is part of the cast in the series The ABC Murders, Snatch, which is available on Crackle, and Sick Note, which is available on Netflix.

Read more:
Daniel Radcliffe explains why he does not intend to see The Cursed Child
Tom Felton says he would return to his role as Draco Malfoy in Cursed Child

Collaborated: Pedro Martins

Translated into English by Paola Galiano
Edited by Aline Michel