I must confess I don't own Harry Potter DVDs. My parents do. They have them all. And they like watching them. They've got all their home videos done in HD quality! They love it. But I struggle very much. I'm very self-conscious as an actor, anyway. I don't like watching my own performances, even in this recent one.
Matthew LewisI think David Yates was just like, "You've got on with it for a few years, I'm gonna let you off the hook." And also, I think it's because the action side of stuff that we were doing, it was going to be very difficult to do all that with all the prosthetics on. It was gonna be hard work, and I think they just said, "You know what?" I think they put a level of trust in me, as well. They said, "You know, we're gonna let Neville Longbottom lose the fat suit, lose the teeth, lose the Adolf Hitler hair."
Matthew LewisI think screenwriter Steve Kloves does such a difficult job. And he does a bloody brilliant job, too. Transferring these Harry Potter books into films and making them coherent is one thing. But making them entertaining, as well, is quite another... He does a tremendous job, and he gets a lot of stick. And it's really unfair sometimes, and I challenge anyone else to do the job he does.
Matthew LewisI never really looked at it like that, but it's true. It's weird that it's been half my life. Because I lead these two separate lives. I've got my life and Harry Potter, where I travel the world, I make films, I meet amazing people, I do press junkets and stuff. And then I go back home to Leeds, where I live, and I've got the same friends from before. I still go to the pub. I still go to watch the football, soccer. And I go shopping at my local shop.
Matthew LewisObviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal.
Matthew LewisEmma Watson was saying the other day that when Helena Bonham Carter was becoming Hermione, or trying to become her for the polyjuice-potion sequence, she was trying to take on Emma's mannerisms, and she was asking Emma questions like, "What's Hermione's favorite color?" Because she wanted to absorb all this information and to know, in here touches temple what she was like. And as I've tried to develop as an actor, I see that these things, however much they seem insignificant... By knowing what's Neville's Longbottom favorite Beatles song, you can know so much!
Matthew Lewis