Harry Potter's Rising Stars: Twenty Years Later

With Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince poised to challenge myriad opening weekend records after its huge, $20-million-plus midnight haul, we at Movieline are taking a moment to reflect on the trio of young actors who have played such a crucial role in the film's -- and the franchise's -- astounding success. But as much as we'd like to simply enjoy their talent in this moment of potentially historic box office achievement, we can't help but let our imagination wander, conjuring visions of what their professional futures might hold. And so we present these brief excerpts from Movieline's "A Hogwarts Class Reunion" a feature that will be available to download on the GooKindle Chrome in 2021, to give you a sneak preview of where Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint's careers have taken them two decades after the release of the first Potter installment.

***

"F*cking hell, mate," exhales Radcliffe, angrily stubbing out his Marlboro on the table, ignoring the pristine ashtray six inches from where his crumpled cigarette butt now lays. It's obviously a sore subject, and the pain is perhaps exacerbated by the presence of a 40-foot-tall reminder of the greatest disappointment of a more-than-solid, 20-year career looming just across the street from the cafe patio where he sits: a billboard for The Hildebrand Rarity, the unfortunately titled James Bond franchise reboot based on the obscure Fleming short story that Radcliffe saw slip from his grasp some 18 months ago. And on that billboard is, of course -- assuming you haven't already immersed yourself in the 3DMax 007 Experience at the MGM Lion's Roar theme-park, or injected your kid with the Burger King Jr. Spy Meal -- the giant, tuxedo-clad form of professional foil Robert Pattinson. "I mean, look at him. White as a bloody ghost. Is Bond supposed to look like the world's most anemic secret agent?" Pattinson has, perhaps superstitiously, maintained the now-trademark vampiric pallor that first carried him to superstardom, but Radcliffe himself has not exactly cultivated an Efronesque love of laser-tanning, either. He sneers when reminded of this fact, then continues his earlier thought. "You know they offered me Bourne a few years back after he [Matt Damon] decided just to direct, right? And I said no, I wanted to hold out. Because it's James Bloody Bond, you know?" He withdraws another Marlboro from the pack and lights it, eyes still trained on the billboard. The hand that holds the cigarette absently traces a circle around the spot above the eyebrow that once famously featured a zig-zagging scar. "Maybe Bourne wouldn't have been so bad."

***

An exquisitely manicured hand slams down on the recorder, shutting it off. "We pre-agreed that she's not answering that kind of question. I'll end this thing right here, don't think I won't," says the publicist, whose tense circling of the hotel room for the entirety of the fifteen-minute junket session made a vulture-strike like this seem inevitable. "We're straight on that, right?" She switches the device back on; in the chair across from it, Watson shrugs a helpless sorry, though her eyes betray that the last thing she'd be willing to chat about is those photos of her and Shia LaBeouf, her 10 Days in Knightsbridge co-star, on the beaches of Indonesia. "I don't think I'm like my character at all," brushing away a stray lock of the hair she's dyed red for the part. "She's so...self-involved? No, that's not fair. She's perhaps a little confused about what she wants. Monica's this wildly successful novelist, she's got the posh row-house, the slavish love of the public, all that. She's just not willing to admit she can live without her editor until he's not there for her anymore. You know, to take care of her words. Or her heart." Then, sensing something: "Oh, come on! It can't all be the costume dramas and the Oscar-bait all the time for a girl, now can it? Lighten up! It's fun."

"Time," says the publicist. Watson, still disarmingly stunning in person even after the kind of top-of-the-box-office exposure that usually dulls even the most world-class Hollywood beauty, shrugs again. Sorry.

***

Why did he keep the mohawk? It suits him, he says. "Danny, you know him, when I arrived on the set he's waiting there with the clippers, and he just [makes mechanical buzzing noise] it all right off, you know? I swear, the bloke's mental." Grint slams another clip into the bottom of the Glock, and blam! blam! blam! the image of a AK-47-wielding terrorist at the other end of the range has three fresh holes in his forehead. Danny -- Boyle, the two-time Academy Award-winner who's coming off the mild disappointment of 2019's mega-budgeted Cyber Destroyers for SonyParamount -- indeed might seem mental for taking on his current challenge: a mind-scrambling, musical reimagining of Taxi Driver that sets the classic 1970s vigilante tale in a fever-dream London cityscape with an original, all-electronic score by three members of Radiohead's original lineup. And as if all that weren't enough of a risk, Boyle enlisted Grint, who'd spent the better part of the decade drifting from little-seen (but well-regarded) indie film to indie film, to be his pansexual, heroin-addicted, falsetto-singing Travis Bickle. The growing Oscar buzz surrounding Grint's performance, however, shows that the quixotic, genre-hopscotching director is anything but insane. Grint finally reels in the target to admire his sharp-shooting handiwork. "I'd never fired a gun before this film, can you believe it? Danny somehow just knew I'd be a good shot." ♦