Was Harry Potter’s First Onscreen Kiss Magic?
Posted June 29, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Was Harry Potter’s first onscreen kiss a magic moment? Actually, if you ask Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who plays the boy wizard, it was scarier than an encounter with the dreaded Voldemort.
In Tokyo for the premiere of the fifth film adaptation of the hugely successful literary series by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Radcliffe admitted it took several takes to get it right.
“When we started it, we were both a bit nervous,” Radcliffe explained. “But after the first few takes, it was sort of like any other scene, which is never really what people want to hear. It doesn’t really feel any different, because you are still acting.”
Harry’s first smooch happens with the girl he’s had his eye on for some time, Cho Chang, played by Katie Leung. Director David Yates wanted the mood to be just right for the scene so he cleared the set to make it more intimate.
“The makeup artist, who’s known Daniel really well from the age of 10, she shed a tear,” producer David Heyman said. “For me, it was quite moving.”
Order of the Phoenix opens in Canada on July 11, two days earlier than previously scheduled and 10 days ahead of the release of the seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The first film was released in 2001 and made actors Radcliffe, Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) instant stars. All three have signed up for the final two films.
The Harry Potter series has been translated into 65 languages and sold more than 325 million copies since the 1997 release of the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
