[LifeStyle] Tom Felton looks back: ‘I had a nice car, a house in LA. You’re told they make you happy – they don’t’

[Amaterasu イタチ]

 

Born in Surrey in 1987, actor Tom Felton is best known for his role as peroxide-blond baddie Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. Before scoring his major role in the fantasy franchise at the age of 12, he appeared in The Borrowers and Anna and the King. He went on to star in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, has released five EPs and most recently appeared on stage in 2:22: A Ghost Story. His memoir, Beyond the Wand, is out now.

This is me, eight years old and in Malaysia shooting my second film, Anna and the King. As the only English-speaking kid on set, I would have been bored, which is why my mum, who was my chaperone, bought me the book The Art of Getting Even. I have three older brothers, so this was research for when I got back home. Not that I would have put any of it into practice, but you can see from the smirk on my face I enjoyed thinking about it.

Jodie Foster was playing my mum. Instead of being familiar with her oeuvre – I’d watched Terminator 2 by the time I was five, but Mum drew the line at The Silence of the Lambs – I was just a fan of Jodie as a person. Not only for her acting, but her patience while working with so many animals and children.

Growing up, I was the runt of the pack – or “maggot”, as my brothers affectionately called me. Mixing with older people made me confident, but I was still pretty naive and extremely cheeky, which is quite cute for a while but can turn into arrogance as you get older. Nevertheless, it came in handy when I went to my first audition for Potter.

In the queue, I was bored. It was very different from the auditions I’d done before – which had been: get in and get out. This was an entire nation of kids who were major fans of the book wanting to have a go. Hundreds of us were lined up and asked about the part of the book we were most excited about seeing in the film. Every one of them had an excited answer, such as “Quidditch!”, while I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, as I hadn’t read the book. What was Hogwarts? I decided to steal the line from the kid next to me – quite poorly, apparently, because the director looked at me like: “Uh-huh, you wanna see Gringotts the most? A bank?” Still, that cockiness might have helped me get the part of Draco.While I initially auditioned for the role of Potter, Draco is the best role I could have got, because he’s a slimy git and so vastly different from who I am. He’s an only child with a huge sense of entitlement and crap parents. While we never went without, we certainly weren’t rich. My mum was very supportive of whatever my latest fad was: if I wanted to be a football player for United, then she’d get me the kit, then she’d get me a new kit when I changed to Chelsea the year after. I wanted to be a yo-yo master and a violinist and an ice-hockey player; my mum worked a third job so I could do all of that. When I moved on to the next thing – which was acting – she wouldn’t berate me, she’d just ask what I needed.

I never felt as if I had any underlying talent, but within a few weeks of getting an agent my life had changed for ever. I did an advert and The Borrowers film came a few weeks after that and then Potter. My school experience was pretty poor as a result. I was used to having a whole class to disrupt, and I hated that I couldn’t be the class clown as it was just me and one tutor doing school work in my breaks on set. When I did go back to normal school, I’d get teased for my bleach-blond hair, but I also got to see my best friends. I got straight Cs in my GCSEs, which I attributed to working too hard on the films. When I found out Daniel [Radcliffe] and Emma [Watson] got nine A*s I thought, you bastards!

 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/19/tom-felton-harry-potter-draco-malfoy-looks-back