24

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

or

THE GIRL FROM THE GREAT HALL

I’d like to take you back to the beginning of the book. It’s my last day filming my first ever movie, The Borrowers, and I’m sitting in the make-up chair having my orange perm cut out. It suddenly hits me that the project is over. Sadness crashes over me and I start to cry. I blame it on the make-up lady, saying she poked me with her scissors, but that’s not the truth at all. The truth is that I’m not good with things being over.

But all things must pass, as my favourite Beatle would say.

The final Potter movie was a colossal endeavour because it was two films shot together, as opposed to the usual six-month break between the previous films. The shoot seemingly went on forever. I wasn’t there for even a quarter of the time that Daniel, Emma and Rupert were, so goodness knows how they felt about the marathon. The final days, however, came round a lot quicker than I would have hoped. We’d spent half our life thinking that the end was nowhere near in sight, but it crept up quickly on us all. At the same time there was a general sense of relief as the finishing post came into sight. But relief is not the same as happiness, and when my final day on set came, I knew what to expect of myself. I had form, after all.

My final day was a second-unit shoot. We filmed Draco leaving the battle, hurrying along a rubble-strewn bridge before he stops for a moment, turns, has a bit of a think, and then walks on. It was one of many scenes that didn’t end up in the film. When the time came for us to wrap, I made a supreme effort to keep a lid on my emotions. I quickly shook the crew by the hand and muttered a few clipped British goodbyes. Then I left.

The moment I was in the car, I started to bawl. The tears wouldn’t stop, but I did my best to hide them from Jimmy, my driver. This time round I had nobody to blame them on, so I just let them come. Whenever people ask me about that moment, they expect to hear about fond farewells with Daniel, Emma, Rupert and the rest of the cast. But none of them were present on my last day, and in any case, some of my very closest friends were part of the camera department, the special effects crew or the hair and make-up team. They’d been a huge part of my life for such a long time, and I felt as sad to be leaving them as I did to be leaving any of the actors. It was a melancholy thought, knowing that I would not be seeing many of those people so regularly, or even ever again, not out of choice but out of life moving on.

I’d had other acting experiences outside of Potter. Between the fifth and the sixth films, I took a part in a production called The Disappeared. It was a low-budget affair, which also starred Rupert Grint’s partner Georgina, and was mostly shot in the underground caverns under London. As an experience it couldn’t have been more different to the wizarding world. From an acting point of view, it was more of a challenge. So much of Potter relied on the costumes and the sets. As long as you turned up and looked the part, that was half the job done. Here, I found myself having to dig a little deeper in my portrayal of a guy whose friend’s brother is snatched, and who ends up having his neck broken by a maniac priest (my mum enjoyed that about as much as she enjoyed the spooky rubber Tom). And it was different in terms of scale. I was used to spending four hours blocking a scene, surrounded by a vast crew and all the paraphernalia of a high-budget movie set. Now I found myself on a council estate playground in Elephant and Castle in the middle of the night, with someone not much older than me holding the camera, with no rehearsal time because we were inevitably behind schedule from the moment we walked on set. For the first time I found myself around actors straight out of drama school rather than big stars, in a more improvisatory environment. On Potter the script was so tightly controlled that there was almost no scope for improvisation, no matter how hard Jason Isaacs tried to slip in extra lines. I was learning that on other projects dialogue and character development were up for discussion in a much more collaborative process. It was a huge learning curve for me.

For the first time, too, I was allowed to drive myself to set. I had to get there on my own and figure things out for myself. So while The Disappeared was undoubtedly important in widening my horizons as an actor, it was in some ways much more important in my development as a normal person.

Blending in always seemed better to me than being recognised. In that respect I was lucky. I’d managed to avoid making Harry Potter the most prominent part of my life. Lots of pursuits were more important to me: fishing, music, cars, hanging out with my friends. Potter was four or five places down on the list. I think it must have been much more difficult for Daniel, Emma and Rupert. Potter had been the primary focus of their lives, whereas for me acting in the Potter movies was just another thing that I did.

People might find this difficult to believe, but it’s true. In fact, counterintuitively, the attention I’ve attracted because of my involvement with Potter has increased almost beyond recognition since the films have ended. Back then, I could quite easily walk along the street, even with luminous blond hair, without being recognised, without somebody shouting my name. Now it’s harder. With each year that passes, Potter seems to become more popular. I find it hard to pinpoint why that should be the case. Ultimately, I think it must be because of the brilliance of the original stories. Unlike many of the children’s stories written around the same time, the Harry Potter books and films are being passed down from one generation to the next. They are one of the few cultural landmarks that link thirteen-year-olds and thirty-year-olds. It means that there has been a snowball effect as more and more people get drawn into the wizarding world. If I had been told while we were making the films that in the years to come there would be a Harry Potter theme park, and that I’d be cutting the red ribbon on our own section of Universal Studios, I’d have laughed in your face.

So, although there was inevitably some sadness when the final film came to an end, I was also able to enjoy the relief. I could enjoy not having to sit in the make-up chair with my hair in foils every week. I could get back to concentrating solely on the ordinary part of my life. Even though I’d received encouragement from the likes of Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman and Jason Isaacs, I didn’t find myself particularly focused on developing my acting career. I didn’t hanker after great fame or outrageous success. I didn’t really see the point of it. I was twenty-two years old and happy with my Muggle life. I was happy to be back on civvy street, with my friends, my dog and my girlfriend.

I’d first noticed her when I was seventeen, around the time of the fourth film, in the Great Hall. There were more than a hundred extras who we would see regularly on set, and on this day she was one of them: a Gryffindork, I’m sorry to say. There was a rule that if you were a student in the Great Hall, you weren’t allowed to wear make-up. It was not a rule she honoured. She was about the same age as me, had glowing, tanned skin and long, jet-black eyelashes. She looked absolutely gorgeous. I know mine was not the only head she turned.

Later I learned she was an assistant to the stunt coordinator. She stood out for many reasons, but mostly for being such a tiny thing surrounded by these stocky, burly stuntmen. One day I was in the office of the second assistant directors. The gorgeous girl from the Great Hall was there with a call sheet, helping to organise the stunt schedule for the day, and we got talking. I asked her if she fancied a cup of tea and a cigarette and she said, “Sure, why not?” So I brewed us a couple of mugs and we went downstairs to loiter outside Door 5 with our drinks and my packet of Benson and Hedges Gold. I smoked far too much in those days, more out of something to do with my hands than anything else. I offered her a cigarette, not knowing at the time that she didn’t smoke. She accepted one. Her eyes crossed slightly as she looked at it, and I think she managed two puffs before coughing violently.

“You don’t smoke, do you?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s just… these are a little strong for me.”

We carried on chatting and, as we did so, members of the crew came in and out of Door 5. It was a busy place to stand. One of the chaps from the props department approached. I knew him well, and we often chatted, but excruciatingly I’d forgotten his name and it was far too late to ask. “Alright, Tom?” he asked cheerfully.

“Hello, mate,” I replied. I gave him my most winning smile and we chatted. When he disappeared into Door 5, I turned to her and decided to fess up. “Oh my days, I can’t believe that!” I said.

“What?”

“We’ve been working together for years, I know his face, we chat about his family… but I don’t even know his name!”

She didn’t smile. She barely reacted. She just gave me a cool look and said, “You don’t know my name either, do you?”

Panic. She was right. I froze for a moment. Then I did that clicking-your-fingers thing you do when you pretend something’s on the tip of your tongue. She let me squirm for a moment—more than a moment—then put me out of my misery. “I’m Jade,” she said.

That was Jade in a nutshell. Sharp, quick-witted and a straight-talker. She was someone who cut through bullshit immediately. We became pretty close, pretty quick. Jade was feisty. She had to hold her own with the stunt boys, who, without wanting to generalise too much, were the geezers of the set. She would sneak into my trailer when she had some free time for a cup of tea, and once had to put up with all the stunt boys rushing in and pretending to beat me up and trash the place, just to embarrass her. I almost surprised myself when one day I said to her: “Are we boyfriend and girlfriend?” She smiled at me. I smiled back, wider.

For our first proper date we went to London Zoo. I turned up at her parents’ house in a new shiny red BMW M6. Her dad—who I ended up knowing affectionately as Stevie G—had the same car, but the slightly tamer version. It looked the same, but there wasn’t much under the bonnet. Mine was far flashier. Jade’s dad opened the front door to see a bloke with white-blond hair and a car far too powerful for any nineteen-year-old, ready to take his only daughter out for a day in London. He’d have been quite within his rights to give me a stringent cross-examination, or at the very least a suspicious eyeballing. But, as I soon learned, he was far too kind-hearted for that, and he took my teenage flashness in his stride and reserved judgement. Anyone else at the time would have thought I looked a right twat. Looking back, even I think I must have looked like a right twat. Jade and I held hands for the first time at London Zoo and smoked a couple of more tolerable menthol cigarettes, and even though my luminous hair was the full Draco, nobody stopped us or even seemed to notice us. Or more likely we just didn’t notice anyone else.

From there, things moved quickly. A few months later I took her to Venice for her nineteenth birthday (miraculously Stevie G rubber-stamped the idea). Poor decision, Tom. The smart move would have been to start lower and move up. Once you’ve booked into a ridiculously fancy hotel in the most romantic city in the world, it doesn’t leave much room for improvement. But I guess I was trying to impress her. We went to Harry’s Bar, one of the swankiest restaurants in the world, two kids surrounded by rich adults. After one Bellini too many, the waiter had to politely ask me to keep my voice down. We had a lot of fun.

Years later, when Harry Potter finished, and I’d got all my crying out of the way, we went on holiday to Italy again to celebrate our time on the films. I’d shaved off my blond hair and we were quietly celebrating the end of the Potter marathon together. I had no real plans for the future. I certainly didn’t really expect to be back on a film set any time soon. So when my agent called me in Italy to say I’d been offered a part in a major movie, I was taken aback. The movie was called Rise of the Planet of the Apes and it meant getting on a plane the following week and flying to Vancouver.

To this day, I don’t know how or why they plucked me out of so many people who could have played the role. I was acutely aware, even at the time, that my ten years of work on Harry Potter was largely down to the fact that I’d turned up one day for an audition when I was twelve. If I hadn’t done so, another person would have performed the part just as successfully. This was different. A massive Hollywood movie starring James Franco and Andy Serkis, with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, for which the filmmakers could pretty much take their pick of any actors in the world. And they’d chosen me without even asking me to audition? It was baffling, but I couldn’t help finding it very cool. It was a moment when I first considered my future as an actor and it looked kind of rosy.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was the first project I’d been involved with that got my dad excited. He was a fan of the Charlton Heston original, which I had never seen. I didn’t even know at the time that one of my lines was infamous: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” All I knew was that it sounded like a brand new adventure, and I gratefully accepted the offer.

Harry Potter had been substantial as film productions go, of course, but there was still something humble and British about tawdry old Leavesden Studios, about grabbing a breath of fresh air outside Door 5. On a major Hollywood movie, everything is bigger and better. Take, for example, the catering. I found myself on set in Vancouver being asked if I wanted something from the “crafty.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Craft services,” they said.

“What’s that?” I repeated.

I was led to a massive food truck that would serve me whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. Cookies, toasties, crisps, you name it. You want ice cream at two o’clock in the morning? No problem. What flavour? Think my doppelgänger Macaulay Culkin ordering room service in Home Alone 2.

And this, it seemed, was going to be my life. A life of free ice cream in the small hours. A life where, with only the formality of a phone call from my agent, I would be whisked from one major film set to another. I thought, This is it. This is what the future’s going to be.

Turned out I was wrong.