HAVING grown up on film, it's probably not surprising that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, the no-longer-quite-so-young stars of the Harry Potter films, have had to start thinking about their futures recently. After all, the hugely successful series, which has dominated their lives since before they were teenagers, will soon be drawing to a close.
There are two more instalments to come, but when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince hits cinemas next week, fans both casual and devout will be left in little doubt that the end is nigh, as Harry (Radcliffe), Hermione (Watson) and Ron (Grint) e
dge ever closer to Harry's fated showdown with the Evil Lord Voldemort.
Which is why the trio are being bombarded with questions of the "what now?" variety as they hold court in a London hotel room.
"Er, I dunno, really," shrugs Grint when the question comes. Fast approaching his 21st birthday – and having just recovered from a bout of swine flu ("It was just like any other flu I've had; I had a sore throat and was in bed for a while") – he reckons he'd like to continue acting, though in truth, he doesn't seem too bothered either way. "Hopefully there will be other stuff out there," he says casually. "We'll just have to wait and see."
Nineteen-year-old Watson has more definite plans. "At the end of August I'm going to university in the States, so I'm very excited about that and looking forward to a bit of normality for a while. That doesn't mean I'm never going to act again," she adds. "The two are not mutually exclusive. It's not that I can't act and study at the same time. I seem to have managed it OK up until now."
For Radcliffe, however, acting is very much the plan. "I just want to keep going for as long as I can," says the star, 20 this month. "I've had a fantastic time on Potter and I'll be very sad to leave it, but equally there will be an element of excitement about the idea that a script might come in and I don't have to go, 'I'm sorry, I'm kind of busy for the next four years'."
Having already stretched himself on the London stage in a critically acclaimed production of Equus, it's understandable that Radcliffe should seem the keenest of the three to see what else he can do on screen. As the face of the franchise, he is, after all, the most in danger of being identified with Potter for the rest of his life – although he does say that people no longer call him Harry in the street quite as much.
"Someone asked me earlier what kind of actor I wanted to be and the only thing I could think of to say was that the greatest quality I think people can have as actors – and some of the actors I most admire have this – is their fearlessness and willingness to try something, even if they think they might fail. It's that kind of fearlessness I aspire to. And I think I wouldn't have done Equus if I didn't already have a taste for that."
All three have certainly come a long way since the first two films in the series, when director Chris Columbus would turn off the sound and talk them through a scene as it was shooting, dubbing in their dialogue later. "We needed that much guidance," admits Watson, who, like Grint, had never acted before being cast in the first film (Radcliffe had already won small roles in The Taylor of Panama and David Copperfield).
"We were only nine or ten and we were working with so many special effects that the first two films were really just about getting to grips with the idea of being on a film set. That was enough. When I was younger I probably was Hermione; I probably didn't need to act that much. I guess now I'd like to think of myself as an actress. I think of going through all of the films as my film academy."
Radcliffe reckons they've been set a good example about how to survive the film industry by working on the films: "Through doing Potter we've worked with a lot of people who have been in the British film industry for a long time and just watching how they've approached their lives and their work, you realise that they've managed to keep going year after year by approaching the job with enthusiasm and passion and a very strong work ethic. Hopefully, that's something we'll all be able to take away from this experience."
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is on release from 15 July
