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Actress Shirley Henderson was 37 years old when she auditioned to play a 14-year-old character in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — but was told to keep her real age close to the chest.
“The casting director said, ‘Go for it — and don’t mention your age,'” the now-60-year-old actress recalled while speaking to The Independent.
“When I was first asked for an audition, I didn’t know who Harry Potter was. But my sister, who was staying with me, had read the books,” she told the outlet. “Still, I wasn’t convinced I could play a 14-year-old girl because I was in my 30s at the time.”
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Per Variety, the petite, 5-foot-1-inch actress dressed the part in her audition for the role of Moaning Myrtle — a Muggle-born witch who attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 1940 to 1943 and appears as a ghost in the film.
“I went to the audition dressed as a schoolgirl — white shirt, black skirt, ponytail — thinking, ‘This is ridiculous,’” Henderson said. “I did my wee bit for them, and they thanked me.”
“Months went by, and I thought that was it, but then they phoned my agent, asked to see me again, and offered me the part… Myrtle is an old person in a young person’s body, and because she’s ghosty, there’s a kind of mistiness,” she added. “You’re not looking closely at my face, so we could get away with it.”
Since she was playing someone half her age, Henderson noted that she was rarely recognized after the movie came out, unlike her young costars, who shot to fame, such as Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, to name a few.
Harry Potter has so far spawned seven books, eight movies, and one play. A new spin-off series, Harry Potter, will soon debut on the small screen for the first time.
Warner Bros. Discovery first announced its plans for a new Harry Potter series in April 2023, with Bloomberg reporting that each season would be based on a single book, starting with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and ending with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The upcoming series “will be a faithful adaptation of the beloved Harry Potter book series,” per an official press release from Warner Bros. Discovery.
The release adds that “each season will be authentic to the original books and bring Harry Potter and these incredible adventures to new audiences around the world, while the original, classic and beloved films will remain at the core of the franchise and available to watch globally.”
