12

FANS

or

HOW (NOT) TO BE A REAL DICK

The Odeon Leicester Square.

I’d attended a premiere here before, of course, when Ash and Jink covered themselves in glory. I mean, vomit. So the first Harry Potter premiere was not entirely unexplored territory for me. My family and I arrived in a couple of black cabs. I emerged in a suit and tie, shirt untucked, top button undone (much to my grandfather’s dismay), and despite the crowd’s excitement I allowed myself to enjoy the fans and the cameras and the general mayhem. After the film, though, as we were exiting, a little kid ran up to me. I suppose he was the son of one of the studio bigwigs. He couldn’t have been much more than five years old and he confronted me with absolute fury in his eyes.

I didn’t get it, why was he giving me such a hard time? What had I done wrong? Was he criticising my acting? It was only when I turned round to see my grandpa smiling that I realised this was a Good Thing. He explained that the boy was supposed to hate me. If a five-year-old has that kind of visceral reaction to my performance, it meant I must have done something right. The penny dropped and I realised that the more of a dick I was, the more that kids hated me, the more fun it would be.

What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that certain fans had difficulty distinguishing between Tom the actor and Draco the character. Understandable in a five-year-old, but perhaps a little harder to process in someone older. At an early premiere in America, a woman approached me with a steely glare.

In a way, the tendency some people have to conflate the character and the actor is a compliment. I don’t want in any way to overstate my contribution to the world of Harry Potter and the effect the phenomenon has had on people’s lives. If I hadn’t turned up to audition that day, somebody else would have had the part, they’d have done it well and the whole project would have been largely the same. But there’s some gratification in knowing that my performance crystallised people’s notion of the character, even if it meant they occasionally mistook fantasy for reality.

I learned that sometimes it was important not to spoil the magic. Over the years I would find myself being invited to a number of Comic Con conventions, where fans congregate to celebrate their enthusiasm for all manner of films, books and any kind of pop culture. At one of the very first, when I was sixteen, I was sitting in front of an audience of several thousand people, answering questions about Potter. There was a queue in the middle of the auditorium of people waiting to reach a microphone and ask me a question. The turn came for a little girl who was dressed head to toe as Hermione and whose mum held the mic as she was not tall enough. Wide-eyed, she asked: “What’s it like to fly on a broomstick?”

I immediately told her the truth. “It’s incredibly uncomfortable,” I said. “Basically, they strap you to a bike saddle on a metal pole, and I’m probably never going to have kids as a result.” My answer raised a bit of a laugh, but I could see the magic draining from the little girl’s eyes and I instantly knew I’d said exactly the wrong thing. The next day, the same question came up from another little Hermione. “What’s it like to fly on a broomstick?”

I’d learned my lesson. I leaned forward, conspiratorially, winked at her and said: “Are you eleven yet?”

“No.”

“So you haven’t had your letter?”

“No.”

“Just you wait,” I told her. “Just you wait.” The girl’s face shone and you could sense a real excitement in the audience. Now, whenever anybody asks me that question (and believe me, they still do), that’s the answer I give.

After the release of the first film, I started to receive fan mail via the studio. These days, fans interact on social media, but back then physical letters were a thing. Almost immediately, I started to receive sack loads of them. My fan mail was nothing like as abundant as Daniel, Emma and Rupert’s, of course. I believe they had a dedicated team at Warner Brothers just to process their mail. But there was a lot of it. My mum would vet the letters first, to make sure there wasn’t anything offensive or obscene, and then I’d spend time reading them all. Make no mistake: as the youngest of four brothers there was absolutely no question of me allowing the receipt of fan mail to go to my head. (Chris: “Who the fuck would write to him?”) Nobody at home gave any indication that they thought it was amazing or even unusual to receive sacks of mail as I did. I’m grateful for that, because reading hundreds of admiring letters could turn a certain type of person in a certain type of environment into a certain type of idiot. I did spend a lot of time reading them, though, at least at first. I felt that since people had given up their time to write to me, it wouldn’t be cool to ignore them. I responded to as many as I could. Eventually, however, it became too much. The sheer volume of letters was overwhelming. My mum looked into the possibility of paying someone to manage the fan mail, but it just didn’t add up. And so my ability to keep on top of the mail diminished as Draco’s profile increased.

Most of the letters I did read were sweet. Some were culturally alien to me. Japanese fans, for example, occasionally sent silver spoons as a good luck charm. So if you ever need a spoon, I’m your man. Sweets and chocolate arrived from every country under the sun, none of which my mum would let me eat in case it was poisoned. One particularly weird piece of fan mail does stick in my mind, however. A chap in America had legally changed his name to Lucius Malfoy, and the name of his house to Malfoy Manor. He wanted me to change my name to Draco Malfoy and go to live with him. My mum kindly declined the offer on my behalf. (Chris: “Nah, send him away!”) It seemed funny at the time. We certainly all had a bit of a laugh about it at home. Only in hindsight do I realise that it could have been just a tad sinister.

That was one of many bizarre incidents to come. A Spanish family—two parents, two kids—turned up at my Muggle school one day. They just walked straight in and started looking for me. They were, of course, swiftly escorted out, and I was warned to be careful when I left school. Who knows what that family had in mind or thought was going to happen, but I certainly cycled home a bit faster that day.

I had to normalise this unusual way of growing up, otherwise it would drive me crazy. In some ways I didn’t find that too hard. My natural British reserve means that, even now, I’m slightly taken aback when somebody approaches me and says, “Are you Tom Felton?” I find myself wondering what that’s all about. How did that happen? Of course, I always had my three brothers to remind me that I was a maggot. Plus, I understood what it was like to be a fan. There were people I admired, and I saw it in others close to me. I once took part in a Comic Relief sketch with Rupert. It featured lots of well-known faces —James Corden, Keira Knightley, Rio Ferdinand and George Michael, to name a few—but the star of the show was Sir Paul McCartney. Mum was a massive fan, so I asked Sir Paul if I could introduce her. He graciously said yes, so I went to find my mum and told her, “Now’s your chance!” I took her to say hello, but at the last moment she became too star-struck and couldn’t go through with it. Sir Paul came looking for her, but I had to let him down lightly. “Sorry, mate, you’ll have to wait another day to meet her.”

As the years passed, though, and the popularity of the films increased, the world of fandom became harder in some ways. Don’t get me wrong, there is something strangely exciting about being recognised, when you realise that a chance encounter with a stranger is a huge event for them. Equally, though, it can be weirdly alienating, especially if you’re with other people who aren’t a part of that world. A moment sticks in my mind when I was about seventeen years old at Heathrow Airport, and about to fly out to America with my girlfriend at the time. While we were waiting for our flight, we slipped into a shop to buy some snacks and a minute later I felt the familiar prickle that told me I was being watched. I turned to see a group of nineteen (we counted them) foreign schoolgirls staring at me. They all had their hands over their faces and were incredibly giggly. I immediately felt myself squirming and tried to avoid eye contact by picking up a knitting magazine that was close to hand. It was very obvious that they had recognised me, and even more obvious that I wasn’t studying crochet patterns, but this was the first time I recall well-meaning fans making me feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t just that being surrounded by a crowd of people who want to touch part of your clothing can be a discombobulating experience. There were thousands of people in the airport. The chain reaction of one person recognising me, then two, then four could soon get out of hand. Fortunately for the schoolgirls my mum wasn’t there—she can be quite bolshie when people crowd me. I took the photo with them, the fans dissipated and I was left with a curious mixture of embarrassment, relief and gratification. I was starting to learn that fame is a strange drug.

Other fans were, and are, more relentlessly persistent. In a weird way they become part of your life. You develop a relationship of sorts with them, and I found it worthwhile to try to understand why I and other members of the cast became such a focus for them. One British lady seemed—and still seems—to pop up magically wherever I go. I first noticed her when she asked for an autograph during a press tour in Paris, and from that day on she seemed to be everywhere. I’d say yes to an event half an hour before it was due to happen and somehow she’d be there. How she knew to expect me, I have no idea. In the early days, I thought it was pretty unhealthy. It certainly led to my mum becoming furiously protective about me if there was any chance that she would be there. Then, one day, she stood outside an event for four hours simply so that she could give me a card telling me how sorry she was that my dog Timber had passed away. It was a kind, heartfelt gesture and it caused me to re-evaluate my opinion of her. I eventually visited her home and learned that she had never had any children of her own and in her head she had kind of adopted the Potter kids. Since I was the only one who engaged with her in any way, she latched on to me. It was an unusual situation, but a reminder of the importance these stories and films have had in people’s lives.

As the actor who played Draco Malfoy, I see myself as a placeholder in people’s memories. Seeing me transports them to a different time and place, in the same way that listening to a particular song can be evocative of something else. I’ve met with fans who have explained that the books and films have helped them through hard times. It’s a humbling truth to hear. Jo Rowling once said that her most gratifying moments come when she learns that her work has helped somebody get through a difficult moment in their life, and I agree. Sure, from time to time seeing me causes people to react in unusual ways, but I try to remember that those reactions are a function of the place these stories and films have in people’s hearts, and to act accordingly. Just because Draco acts like a real dick, it doesn’t mean I have to.

But it can be difficult.

I’m twenty-five years old, and it’s my first time surfing with some friends on Topanga Beach in California. My expert mates are telling me how to do it: what waves to look for, how to get up on to the board, all the technical stuff. I’m not really listening. I’m thinking, I’m just going to wait until I feel the surfboard move, then I’m going to get up and give it a crack. The first wave comes. It’s a reasonable size. I stand up on the board, maintain my balance and glide all the way in. This surfing business is easy!

Or maybe it isn’t. For the next five waves I get completely tumble-dried. I swallow a good pint of seawater, having discovered that being spun round under the water with no sense of which way is up or down can be disorientating and rather scary. Bashed up, I crawl my way out of the ocean on to the sand, yak up the sea water I’ve swallowed, and wave away my concerned mates. Just give me a minute, okay?

And then I see them. Two young women, standing about twenty metres away, holding a camera, pointing at me and whispering to each other. Not now, I think. Please not now! But they approach, a little bit timidly, and I can tell they’re about to say something. I know what they want and I have a massive sense-of-humour failure. I stand up and wave my arms in the air. “Okay!” I shout. “Let’s do this! Who wants to be in the picture?”

The young women look at each other. A slightly strange look. But sure enough one of them holds up the camera. “Come on then,” I say. “I know the drill.”

They look strangely at each other again, then at me. Then, in faltering English with an Italian accent, one of them says, “With the surfboard?”

“Sure! Whatever! You can have a photo with me and my board!”

They shake their heads. They diffidently hand me the camera. And only then do I realise that they don’t have the foggiest idea who I am: they just want me to take their photo with the surfboard as a memento of their trip to California.

I got too big for my boots that day, for sure. I also learned two important lessons. One: assumptions are the mother of all fudge-ups. And two: surfing is really fudging hard.