When the lead cast of the multi-billion-dollar Harry Potter film franchise packed their bags and headed to the non-wizard world after the series ended in 2011, they walked away with secure financial futures and career paths.
With more than $US7.7 billion in box office receipts for the eight films – the first premiered in 2001 – Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) became multi-millionaires, magically turned into adults, became fathers, activists and actors in other genres.
As the private Watson celebrated her 33rd birthday on April 15 with a candid (and Britney Spears length) Instagram post to her 70 million followers, her fellow Potterheads have continued to find their own artistic niches in front of the camera.
Let’s see where the world has taken them 21 years after take-off.
Thank you, ‘witches’
Watson, who graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, has made a few feature length and independent films since Harry Potter.
She played Meg March in Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age drama Little Women in 2019 but most notably has been a global ambassador for women’s rights and gender equality.
“This is 33. Holy moly … I stepped away from my life,” she wrote, revealing she learned to surf, ride horses, play golf, cook and “eat green things”.
She felt “really sad and pissed off about a lot of things”, but doesn’t elaborate, and learned about love, being a woman and even directed her first commercial.
“Thank you to the witches in my coven who were so pivotal in helping me arrive at where and who I am now.
“You are my Avengers and you inspire me and kick ass. It takes a village, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” she wrote.
She started a women’s environmental investment fund and has been one of the world’s highest-paid actresses, according to Forbes.
In fact, her role playing Hermione Granger as a muggle-born witch in the eight Harry Potter movies netted her $US85 million alone.
Tweet from @PotterWorldUK
Watson’s return to social media comes a week after news broke that HBO Max is set to turn the Harry Potter novels, written by JK Rowling between 1997 and 2007, into a decade-long TV series.
While the casting net has been thrown far and wide to find some new talent for the series, which the studio promises will be produced with “the same epic craft, love and care”, some diehard fans are not happy.
One Twitter page, Harry Potter Universe, came unde fire for writing: “This new Harry Potter TV series will replace all of our favourite actors from the films and, despite being a massive fan of everything Harry Potter, I will NOT support it”.
Prime time candidates
Meanwhile, Hello! Magazine has gone out on a limb and scoured the internet looking for Potter fans to come up with possible replacements,
Will these actors take the reins for the new HBO series, Hello! reported after one TikTok user’s suggestions went viral?
British actor best known for appearing in Pistol and Rare Beasts,Toby Woolf (Harry Potter), Bronte Carmichael (Hermione), Joshua Pickering (Ron Weasley), Tom Felton (Lucius Malfoy), Adam Driver (Severus Snape) and Helen Mirren (Minerva McGonagall).
Stay tuned.
Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter)
Radcliffe is also 33 years old and played Harry for all eight movies, beginning with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001 and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -Part 2 in 2011.
He took to the theatre for a while before returning to play roles in horror movies and rom-coms including Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck, where he was the dog walker.
His latest career move saw him star alongside Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in The Lost City last year, and he played Al Jankovic in the biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which is now streaming on Paramount+.
In March, Radcliffe’s rep confirmed to Us Weekly that he would soon join the club of Potter parents: he and longtime girlfriend Erin Darke are expecting their first child.
Net worth? $US110 million.
Emma Watson (Hermione Granger)
The Sorcerer’s Stone was Watson’s first acting credit.
The year the series wrapped she secured parts in My Week With Marilyn followed by The Perks of Being a Wallflower in 2012 and The Bling Ring in 2013.
There was also a role for her in the Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg apocalyptic comedy, This Is the End and in the Disney live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.
IMDb says she’s got two projects in development, including one as executive producer of Queen of the Tearling.
Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley)
This is big news.
Grint, 34, became a dad in real life in 2020.
Us Weekly reported he and girlfriend Georgia Groome welcomed a baby girl.
“It’s also, like, super weird for me to think that we are all at the age where we are all having children, but we definitely are,” he told late night talk-show host Andy Cohen in 2020.
After the Potter movies, he enjoyed theatre and TV success and recently acted in feature-length thriller, Knock at the Cabin starring Dave Bautista.
His net worth? $US50 million.
Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley)
A young chubby-faced Harry Melling played Dudley Dursley in five Potter movies.
Now 34, he is unrecognisable as American writer Edgar Alan Poe alongside Christian Bale in The Pale Blue Eye.
He was also in the Cohen Bros’ Ballad of Buster Scragg and played Harry Beltik in The Queen’s Gambit alongside Anya Taylor-Joy.
Net worth? $US3m.
Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy)
The British actor was a child star before Harry Potter fame.
After Harry fame, he has sustained regular acting gigs, mostly smaller-budget dramas and thrillers including Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Apparition and Megan Leavey.
He was even in a Dutch period piece The Forgotten Battle in 2020 and published a memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard.
Net worth? $US20m.
Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom)
Lewis was also a child star before arriving on the Potter set at age 11.
He has enjoyed a successful acting career since, and let the world know in 2015 he was all grown up when he posed in his underwear for Attitude magazine.
He is still a successful actor, loves rugby (Leeds Rhinos) and has a tattoo of the number 11 on his right arm and several articles of clothing that also contain the number 11 “as he views this as a symbolic number in his life (it was also the year he was cast as Neville Longbottom)”, according to celebritynetworth.com.
Net worth? $US20m
Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory)
Pattinson starred in the fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), one of his Pattinson’s first acting credits.
He went on to take the lead role in the blockbuster Twilight Saga series, playing vampire Edward Cullen alongside Kristen Stewart’s Bella.
He became a household name, starring in the 2019 Oscar-nominated Robert Eggers film The Lighthouse opposite Willem Dafoe, Tenet in 2020 and The Devil All the Time.
The Batman has become the biggest role of his career to date.
Current net worth? $US100m
Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood)
