It’s not just the kids who are salivating. By now, a mere week away from the giddily anticipated publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there’s an entire roll call of actors who are drooling at the prospect of sneaking a peek at Rowling’s franchise stopper. These actors, aka the established Harry Potter movie cast, are desperate to see just how they’ll feature (or not) in the final act, how big their roles (and hence their pay cheques) will be, and what pivotal part (or not) they’ll play in closing the door on a $3.5 billion series.
“Everyone’s waiting for the seventh book, and looking at each other saying, ‘Oh, I wonder will I be in the running?’” says the 52-year-old Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, who made a big splash in the fourth movie Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,as the irascible Professor “Mad Eye” Moody, and again returns in this week’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Sitting forward excitedly on the edge of a black leather sofa in a Central London hotel room, Gleeson admits to being excessively fond of his Mad Eye persona, a character that he was initially reluctant to play. “I was insistent that I didn’t want to do it, because the character that was in the book, whom I loved, didn’t end up in the script,” he explains. “So I met up with [ Goblet of Fire director] Mike Newell and said that I didn’t want to do him unless he had the same impact as in the book, you know, as a surrogate father to Harry Potter. And when the script came back, it was a fantastic role.”
Gleeson also admits that as a former English teacher he was enthusiastic about the chance to get back into the classroom again. “Only this time I could do it with magical powers and no conscience,” he giggles. In fact, Gleeson can claim the honour of being the only actor in the entire Potter franchise ever to have been a “real life” teacher.
During his ten years as a Dublin primary school teacher, Gleeson explains that he was always acting in the theatre, and even writing plays; he just never had the guts to embrace the job as a full-time occupation. “I loved teaching,” he says. “And I always used to say that acting was just something I did purely on my own terms, and that if I had to make a living from it there would be too much pressure.” However, after rave reviews and three different theatre awards for writing, in 1989 Gleeson finally quit his job and took the plunge into acting, at the relatively late age of 34.
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He quickly established a two-tier screen career that has continued right up to this day – namely, playing complicated and empathetic leading roles in smaller productions such as The General and I Went Down, and then taking quirky scene-chewing supporting parts in big-budget Hollywood blockbusters such as Gangs of New York, Kingdom of Heaven, Troy and the Potter movies. Counting Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio among his co-stars, Gleeson says that although he feels the compunction to act, and is always searching for bigger and better things, he has no time for the muck-raking instincts of our celebrity culture. “I don’t want people poking around in my private stuff,” he warns. “They’ve no business in it. My work is what I give to people, that’s my job, and that’s where it stops.”
Next up for Gleeson is another blockbusting role, this time as the doughty, dragon-bashing warrior Wiglaf in Robert Zemeckis’s computer-enhanced epic Beowulf. The movie, three years in the making, uses cutting-edge motion-capture techniques. “I got a real buzz out of that,” admits Gleeson. “You’re standing there with Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich and Ray Winstone, and you’re all wearing revealing, embarrassing leotards with dots all over them, and you do your scene together two or three times, and that’s it.”
Meanwhile, the ever-industrious Gleeson is getting ready to play Winston Churchill in the movie Churchill at War, and has just finished shooting the hitman movie In Bruges. And, of course, there’s still the small matter of the Harry Potter finale to negotiate. He says, on reflection, and after some prodding, that he is intensely territorial about old Mad Eye. “If the character has something crucial to do in the seventh book, then I want to be there to do it.” And no doubt he will.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is on general release
ELF WARNING: TEACHING HARRY POTTER IS BAD FOR YOU
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Teachers of Defence Against the Dark Arts never last more than a year
PROF QUIRINUS QUIRRELL (played by Ian Hart) This wimpy type was not up to the challenge and became possessed by Lord Voldemort.
Fate Death, crumbling into ash after Harry foils You Know Who.
PROF GILDEROY LOCKHEART (Kenneth Branagh) J. K. Rowling based this celebrity sham artist on a real figure from her past. She won’t say who.
Fate Last spotted in St Mungo’s Hospital after losing his memory.
PROF REMUS LUPIN (David Thewlis) Harry’s first well-meaning DATDA teacher, Lupin struggled with the handicap of being a werewolf.
Fate Resigns after being outed as a lycanthrope, but reappears later as a member of the Order of the Phoenix.
PROF ALASTOR “MAD-EYE” MOODY (Brendan Gleeson, above) This veteran wizard lost an eye in his battles against evil. Wears a magical, all-seeing replacement.
Fate Kidnapped by a Voldemort minion, he then followed Lupin into the Order of the Phoenix.
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PROF DOLORES UMBRIDGE (Imelda Staunton) A Ministry of Magic informer.
Fate Sacked, after being mobbed by angry centaurs.