Actors Who Almost Played A Harry Potter Character

Warner Bros. hired Chris Columbus to direct the first movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone, as it was called in the U.K.). At the time, he reportedly had his own idea for who should play the title role: Liam Aiken, who was 10 years old when the movie was casting in 2000, and who had acted in a handful of movies, including Columbus' 1998 tearjerker Stepmom. Aiken himself confirmed he at one point "had the role." "I flew to England, and a week later, I had the role. Then the next day, I didn't," he said, according to the New York Daily News. Why the immediate reversal? J.K. Rowling herself said no—she had script approval and wanted all of the actors to be British. Aiken had the misfortune of being born in the U.S.A.

As Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone geared up for production in 2000, the filmmakers auditioned dozens of kid actors for the main three roles of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Both experienced and new actors were considered. The relatively new Emma Watson landed the role of Hermione of course, but she edged out a veteran child star: Hatty Jones, who'd played the title role in the 1998 adaptation of the Madeline storybooks.

While the late Alan Rickman became beloved to a generation of young fans for his nuanced portrayal of the complicated, lovelorn, and deceptively nasty Potions teacher Severus Snape, it's very easy to see Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction, Rob Roy) in the role. And Harry Potter's producers (and J.K. Rowling) could see it, too—Roth was offered the part. Unfortunately, the filming of the first movie coincided with the filming of a role he'd already accepted: Thade in Tim Burton's 2001 Planet of the Apes remake. Crews of both films had agreed to accommodate him flying back and forth between shooting locales, but Roth pulled out of Potter at the last minute because it "got to be overwhelming in my mind." Ultimately, he said, "being an ape with Tim was too good."

Richard Harris portrayed the Hogwarts headmaster in the first two Harry Potter films but couldn't continue to play the role due to the unfortunate circumstance of his own death in 2002. As the movies had to be tightly adapted from the books, killing off Dumbledore wasn't an option, so producers recast the role. Michael Gambon eventually took over as Dumbledore, but filmmakers first approached Ian McKellen. At the time, McKellen had just completed filming three Lord of the Rings movies, in which he played a powerful wizard with a long-white beard, and he didn't want to do it again.

Part of the reason stemmed from the fact that McKellen didn't think it would be right for him to take over a role from Harris. Not long before his death, he'd publicly criticized McKellen, and fellow acting legend Derek Jacobi, calling them "technically brilliant...but underneath they are hollow, because their lives are hollow." 

"I couldn't take over the part from an actor who I know disapproved of me," McKellen explained.

The eccentric, Oscar-winning actress was reportedly up for the role of doomsaying soothsaying Professor Sybil Trelawney, beginning with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban but allegedly couldn't find time in her schedule to accommodate the role, according to BBC. Whether those rumors were true were called into question in 2008, though, when Swinton revealed said that she never would have considered a role in the Harry Potter series because she is "loath to say anything good about going to boarding school." "I believe [Harry Potter] fetishizes boarding school for children," she added. Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson must have held different views, because she got the part, instead.

For the role of the nosy and nasty Daily Prophet gossip reporter Rita Skeeter, producers sought out Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike, at the time best known to American audiences for her role as double agent Miranda Frost in the 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day. Even though she says she "owed a favor" to Goblet of Fire director Mike Newell, Pike reportedly turned down the role because it was both too small and too much of a commitment. Skeeter was barely in Goblet of Fire, but the contract she would've had to sign would lock her down to the next movies in the series, too, according to Snitch Seeker.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a contingent from the French wizarding school Beauxbatons Academy of Magic takes residence at Hogwarts for the Tri-Wizarding Tournament. Their representative in the contest is Fleur Delacour. Despite being 29 at the time, a bit old for the role of a student, Kate Winslet reportedly took meetings with the Harry Potter creative team. The younger and actually French actress Clémence Poésy wound up in the part instead.