Lindy assured me that everybody was reading the books and this could well be the next Big Thing. She was right. It’s always fascinating to be part of a movement and, of course, Harry Potter did become an extraordinary wave that swept the world.
I was told that I was being seen for Pomona Sprout, the Professor of Herbology and Head of Hufflepuff House, which at the time meant nothing to me, because I hadn’t read the books — and I didn’t have time to read them before the interview. I know it was naughty not to have read at least Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first (and shortest) book of the series, before the interview, but I wasn’t going to pretend I’d read every word; I was either right for the part, or I wasn’t.
I went to meet David Heyman, the producer and founder of Heyday Films, and the director, Christopher Columbus. They were charming, friendly and made me feel very welcome. I confessed that I didn’t know much about the series, but if they wanted somebody who could act a teacher, there was no question that I could play the part. ‘I give good teacher,’ I told them. (I didn’t tell them that I don’t particularly like children though. That would have been unnecessary.) They gave me a page of script to read; I didn’t think that it was terribly distinguished writing, in some ways it was rather banal, actually, but I read it, and that was that.
A few days later, Lindy rang in great excitement to tell me that I’d got the part of Pomona Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She was cock-a-hoop. I always want to know about the money. It was £60,000, with residual payments according to the American Screen Actors Guild agreement. This was important, because it carries medical insurance with it and, at my age, I was mindful of the cost of treatment if you didn’t use the NHS.
Production started on 19 November 2001 — only three days after the general release of the first Harry Potter film, which had been a huge success. It was filmed mostly in the cavernous Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, a converted aircraft factory and airfield just outside Watford, where they had built all the colossal sets, from the impressive Great Hall that could seat more than four hundred children, to the Dickensian Diagon Alley, home to Gringotts Bank and Ollivanders wand shop, where Harry’s wand chose him.
We also went on location to shoot scenes: to the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, and to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, which is actually Hogwarts (and was also home to the ‘Black Adder’ himself, Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh). Location is fun. They put me, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, Alan Rickman, Kenneth Branagh and Warwick Davis in the same lovely hotel. At the end of a long, often freezing-cold day’s filming, Richard Harris liked to be welcomed by a roaring fire in an open grate, so the hotel staff had to keep it blazing all day because no one knew what time we might finish. And Maggie Smith got the room with the four-poster bed but she thoroughly deserved it. On the first morning, when I came down to breakfast, Richard Harris was having his toast and marmalade at another table with Maggie Smith. I said to him, brightly, ‘Good morning,’ and he growled, ‘Fuck off.’ I later found out that he had leukaemia, but I didn’t know that then, and I was quite offended. I kept myself to myself after that, at least where Dumbledore was concerned.
My memory of the whole experience comes in flashes of scenes and moments. In one scene we had to play Quidditch; a bizarre experience, because it was all done on ‘green screen’. We had to stand stock still by a pole against a green background. We each had a number, and when somebody called your number, you had to make a gesture of some kind, as if the elusive and darting Golden Snitch was right there at the end of your nose. I was decidedly non-committal about Quidditch, the sport didn’t make my blood race at all. I remember determinedly swiping with my Quidditch stick at an imaginary Golden Snitch and becoming quite red in the face and sweaty with my exertions. Funnily enough, my next door neighbour is the president of the UK Quidditch Society. He’s nuts about the game, but I can’t get the hang of it at all.
The fun part of it, of course, was talking to the other actors when we weren’t on camera. As the cast list was a roll call of the British acting elite, it was exciting to see who was on set each day, and to say hello to everyone and have a chance to catch up with old friends, like Julie Walters and David Bradley and Robbie Coltrane, at lunch. It was always a little scary to be working with Maggie Smith. I am very fond of her, but her reputation is justified; she is a great actress with a distinguished career, she loves to laugh and she’s deliciously witty, funny and jokey, but there is that other side to her, which is biting. The stories are legendary. When one night Laurence Olivier criticised her vowel purity, she riposted the next evening looking pointedly at his blackface Othello make-up, enunciating with punishing clarity: ‘How Now Brown Cow’; and when asked if she’d like to see Fiona Shaw as Richard II she said, ‘I’d rather drink ink.’ Luckily Maggie and I got on. Sometimes she would say, ‘Oh, come and sit with me, Miriam, I’m bored.’ I would go and sit with her and we would talk and laugh. She also had a much nicer trailer than I did.
I can’t say if Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane or Alan Rickman felt similarly underwhelmed by Harry Potter, but even if the main actors didn’t consider these the greatest works of literature in the world, they took the work seriously. They’re rattling good stories. Even if they didn’t lift cinema into another sphere, they were unbelievably popular, which is something that we actors respect. The law of the box office is the first law of the movie industry.
Before we did our scenes together, I was introduced to the three youngsters — Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson — who at that time, right at the beginning of the film series, were extremely young. But they were three well-brought-up, beautifully behaved middle-class children. J. K. Rowling was determined that the films be shot in England, with English actors. I think she was right; there’s a knowing, precocious quality about American child actors which I find unpleasant. Our trio were refreshingly unspoiled.
All the children on set were impeccably behaved and as I can’t help my foul language, they decided that every time I said ‘fuck’, or some other ‘bad word’, I had to put ten pence into a swear jar, the proceeds of which would go to the World Wildlife Fund. I don’t know how much the obscenity fund amounted to in the end, but it was an appreciable sum. Daniel claimed not to remember this when we met recently on The Graham Norton Show; I was probably careful around him, a nice Jewish boy, but with the other kids I didn’t bother.
Even though I don’t go dewy-eyed over children, I’ve always got on with them, perhaps because they think I’m more or less one of them: I’m short, so I don’t tower over them like most grown-ups, and I’m also quite naughty, which they appreciate.
Our big scene together was in the greenhouse, where Professor Sprout is teaching her second years how to re-pot mandrake plants. Pomona is responsible for growing the mandrake crop to maturity, at which point their juice is used to revive petrified victims of the monstrous, serpentine Basilisks. Those screaming mandrakes were quite frightening because, even though all the sound effects were added afterwards, the animatronic plants moved in a lifelike fashion, and actually breathed as if emitting an ear-shattering scream. They were vile and scary and I cringed when I had to lift one out of its pot. The animatronics are controlled by off-camera engineers, who make them seem alive. The creatures were brilliantly realised in the Leavesden workshops. The basilisk was equally horrifying and huge. I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s what cinema is all about now. It’s not really about acting any more.’