Magic Hour

BIGGER AND BETTER

Daniel Radcliffe
“There’s a huge amount of pressure on everybody to make the films better and better, but Goblet Of Fire really is. It’s a much better film than any of the others have been. It’s absolutely fantastic.”

Mike Newell
“What is different about this film, compared to the others, is that the director is English! And there’s a whole raft of stuff about school in our culture. We have a huge literature of children’s school stories and I read them all. However, Goblet is a psychological thriller more than anything else. It’s kind of like North By Northwest, but with a dragon chasing the hero instead of a plane.”

DARK LORD RISES

Mike Newell
“There are no pictures of Voldemort. You need to go and see the movie! The great thing is, you’ve spent four books waiting for the creature of ultimate evil and you have no idea what he looks like... and now, up he pops. And he does not disappoint.”

Daniel Radcliffe
“When Ralph Fiennes came on set in the full make-up and costume, a hush fell. It was hard work for him, whereas I just stood there looking scared! It’s hard to communicate pure terror and hate with just with your face. Ralph was incredibly scary as Voldemort. When it was just us, I forgot everyone else was there and it was just me with this insane, evil man.”

WET’N’WILD

Mike Newell
“The merpeople were great – as well as the Grindylows, the nasty little octopuses.”

Daniel Radcliffe
“I enjoyed doing the underwater stuff. I trained for about six months beforehand. Before the film they gave us the choice: filming it on wires with a bluescreen, or learning to dive. I think it would have been laziness on my part if we’d done it on the wires. We filmed for about a month and I went through two ear infections!”

HARRIED HAGRID

Mike Newell
“There’s a massive frisson between Hagrid [Robbie Coltrane] and Madame Maxine [Frances de la Tour], head of the Beauxbatons Academy, and it’s very funny. Robbie said to me after their first scene together: ‘She’s the first creature that Hagrid’s ever been afraid of!’”

FRESH FACES

Mike Newell
“You’ll adore Viktor Krum; the kid who plays him [Stanislav Ianevski] is Bulgarian and he looks like an Eastern European. It’s the most wonderful piece of casting and we found him in Mill Hill School! The Beauxbatons girls are gorgeous. This is the first film that’s sort of dealt with boys and girls and sex and all that, which is pretty funny.”

Daniel Radcliffe
“I loved doing all that stuff. Mike directed Four Weddings And A Funeral, so he was the perfect director to do it. With all the stuff with Voldemort and the dragons, it’s all very dark and sinister, so you do need to balance that out.”

DUMBLEDORE UNSURE

Mike Newell
“What’s different in this film is that the children, particularly Harry, are much more vulnerable. This time he’s not just up against spiders and basilisks, he’s up against almost Miltonic evil – this is Satan he’s facing! Here, the dreadful things happening are so surprising that even the adults don’t know what’s going on. Dumbledore [Michael Gambon] is at a loss, which makes him a much more interesting character.”

CHASING THE DRAGON

Daniel Radcliffe
“In the book the dragon sequence isn’t as long as it is in the film. Mike’s put some of his own conceptions into the story. Here, the dragon chases Harry all around Hogwarts, over the lake, everywhere. At one point I get knocked off my broom and slide down a roof. It was terrifying! But I started to enjoy it after the first four times...”

Mike Newell
“We got such a great dragon, we couldn’t bear not to give him a really good run for his money! He’s a great, great dragon. A wonderful creature.”

ALL-SEEING (MAD-)EYE

Daniel Radcliffe
“I love Mad-Eye Moody. Brendan Gleeson was fantastic – he’s a really nice guy, completely different from Mad-Eye! That made it all the more scary when he went into character and started screaming. He had an animatronic eye which worked with a magnet.”

Mike Newell
“We had great fun with him. He and Ralph Fiennes were building new characters from the ground up.”

REAL TIME

Daniel Radcliffe
“People have said to me, ‘Don’t you think it’ll scare kids?’ And I reply, ‘Yeah, but it’ll scare adults too!’”

Mike Newell
“I’m not sure these films have been as emotional as they could have been so far. Hopefully Goblet Of Fire will grip people emotionally. I wanted it to feel real.”

© 2005 Warner Bros. Ent.
Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R.

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