After a decade working on one of the most high-profile movie franchises in film history, the world is waiting on Tom Felton’s next move. Fortunately, it’s a big one.
As a Harry Potter fan, an interview with Tom Felton – who played the film saga’s enfant terrible head- boy, Draco Malfoy – was a thrilling prospect. Managing to rem ain professional and dignified throughout (I held in any “10 points for Gryffindor!” outbursts) it quickly beca me clear that Felton is as humble as child-turned-adult actors come – and nothing like the sneering, wet behind the ears character he’s known for.
Unlike co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, Felton was in big-screen films long before Potter. As part of Jim Broadbent’s miniature, mischievous family in 1997’s The Borrowers and Jodie Foster’s son in 1999’s melancholic historical drama Anna and the King. “One of the things about growing up while filming,” he says, “is that I never really realised that acting was something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life” the 26 year old explains, before admitting he briefly wanted to become a full-time fisherman. “I said that to the media when I was 12 and it’s kind of stuck with me since.”
Nowadays, post-Potter and post-almost-career- change, London-based Felton can’t move for acting projects.
There are currently 10 in the pipeline, including a 10 episode series titled Full Circle and a TNT pilot, Murder in the First, which would mean relocating to LA if it gets picked up. “I’m packing up with my girlfriend, my dog and my things and moving the whole lot over there.”
Most exciting of all, out this September 27, is Therese, in which he stars with Elizabeth Olsen. He plays Parisian Camille Raquin – a man married to his cousin Therese (a sexually frustrated Olson). “The character is pretty much the direct opposite of any character I’ve played previously, in regards to his manner and the way he holds himself. Without saying too much, he’s a weedy little git. It was a lot of fun to play that!”, he laughs.
How, like Radcliffe, Watson and the rest, was he seemingly able to steer clear of typical pre-and-post- adolescent temptations – drugs, drink, general excess – enough to avoid the British tabloid media’s lecherous gaze and, specifically, MailOnline’s “Sidebar of Shame”? “I was told by a few people that had we had shot Potter in the United States, it would have been a slightly different story,” he says. “I was blessed with three older brothers who, you know, treated me like the runt of the pack. They didn’t give me any special treatment. It kept my feet on the ground.”
ROLLACOASTER is also handed out in boutiques across London during Fashion Week and London Collections: Men.
(c)Polish Support
