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The Movies > Chambers of Secrets: Casting
Returning Cast Members from Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone (Page 1)
KENNETH BRANAGH (Gilderoy Lockhart)
Shakespeare specialist Branagh plays Lockhart, the ego-driven, golden-locked schmoozer hired to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Branagh has been a respected whiz kid of the London stage and has honed, through years of dramatic training, the ability to be charming -- either as his real self or a fake like Lockhart. In real life he is a nice guy. And he can pump up this good nature and a phony veneer in playing the grinning prof with the very shaky monster management skills.
Kenneth Charles Branagh was born 10 December 1960 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was one of three children in a Protestant family. The Branagh clan moved to Reading, England, to escape the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants that wracked the city. Branagh was 9 years old.
Branagh picked up an English accent during his school years but always considered himself an Irishman. He was athletic, serving as captain of his school rugby and soccer teams, and early on showed the writing talent that would increase his fame as an adult. He wrote kid book reviews for the school paper. At age 15, he saw Sir Derek Jacobi (an actor rumored for the Ollivander role) performing in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. With that show, Branagh decided to become an actor.
At 18, he was offered admission to either the Central School of Speech and Drama or the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He entered the second, and after graduation immediately appeared in Another Country in London's West End theater district. He was saluted for the role, but his greatest stage triumph was in the title role of Shakespeare's Henry V with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at age 23. In 1989, he reprised the Henry role for the "big screen," and also directed the film.
In the later half of the 1980s, Branagh started the Renaissance Theatre Company in London. He had become frustrated with the RSC's impersonal nature. His own troupe won acclaim for its Shakespeare plays, including Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night. Branagh also worked in film and TV, including the BBC miniseries The Fortunes of War. During this time, he was compared to the young Sir Laurence Olivier, one of the UK's greatest 20th century stage and Shakespeare actors.
In 1989, Branagh married actress-screenwriter Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility); they separated in 1995. During their years together, they made the Hollywood reincarnation drama Dead Again (1990). He wrote, directed, produced and starred in it.
Among Branagh's other movie projects were Much Ado About Nothing; Swing Kids (1993, uncredited role as a strangly sympathetic Gestapo man); Mary Shelley's Frankstein (1994, taking over from Francis Ford Coppola); Othello (as Iago, the villian); and Hamlet. This 1996 movie was the entire Shakespeare play, uncut and four hours long, directed by Branagh.
As the 1990s closed, Branagh appeared in small films (The Theory of Flight) and bloated Hollywood nightmares (Wild Wild West as the drawling Dr. Loveless). Other U.S. stuff included Celebrity, directed by Woody Allen, and voice work for the animated Road to El Dorado; and yet another Nazi role (Reinhard Heydrich) in Conspiracy (2001), in which he and other officers are seen discussing plans for the Holocaust. He also directed another Shakespeare movie adaptation: Love's Labours Lost (1999), with 1930s and '40s Cole Porter songs thrown in between scenes. In 2002, Branagh also was seen as an English playwright trying to adjust to Los Angeles in How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog.
MIRIAM MARGOLYES (Professor Sprout)
Margolyes portrays Sprout, Herbology instructor and head of Hufflepuff House.
Margolyes is a veteran character actress and voiceover artist, providing voices to cartoon characters and for advertisements. She was born 18 May 1941 in Oxford, England, to a family that had emigrated from Belaurus (near Russia).
Margolyes studied at Cambridge University and participated in the college's Footlights comedy troupe. She achieved fame in the UK for her extensive stage and film work. Her drama experience was accumulated both in London's West End theater district and Broadway in New York. She moved to Los Angeles after attracting attention for her role in Little Dorrit (1988). The L.A. Film Critics honored her for Best Supporting Actress for this part.
She became a specialist for doing both historic dramas and comedies. She has appeared Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again, Lawrence Kasdan's I Love You to Death and Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.
Margolyes' most notable British TV work was several roles in the Blackadder historic satire series, including Queen Victoria. She also appeared in the miniseries Vanity Fair.
Her voiceover work includes Disney's James and the Giant Peach and Mulan and Universal's Babe, as the title pig's mother. Other kid movie work includes Cats & Dogs (2001), as the maid who dresses Mr. Tinkles the cat up in stupid little costumes. Also in 2001, she starred opposite Ralph Fiennes in Sunshine.
Margolyes also has recorded a number of audio books for publishers, such as Penguin Putnam, and several Charles Dickens novels, including A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist. Margolyes said her extensive exposure to many foreign refugees who moved to Oxford after World War II when she was a child helped hone her ability with assorted dialects.
In April 2002, Margolyes was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to theater and drama.
ALFRED BURKE (Headmaster Armando Dippet)
Burke portrays Dippet, who was at the helm at Hogwarts when Tom Riddle was a student there. Burke was born 28 February 1918 in in Peckham, London, England.
Burke has been in movies, theater and television for six decades, but his best-known role in Britain is as Frank Marker, a cynical private eye in Public Eye. Marker worked out of a cubbyhole office, his cases taking him to the shabbier parts of London in this 1969-75 series.
Burke's other television credits (mostly UK) are extremely extensive. They include The Avengers, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and Danger Man. He won acclaim for playing Long John Silver in an adaptation of Treasure Island and as the Rev. Patrick Bronte in The Brontes of Haworth, about the famous literary family. Burke also performed the Bronte role in a one-man stage show.
Burke also has had a long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company and continues to perform with the troupe. His movie roles include A Midsummer's Night Dream, The Night Caller, The Nanny and the chiller classic Children of the Damned (1963).
SALLY MORTEMORE (Madam Irma Pince)
Mortremore, a British actress, plays Madam Pince, the Hogwarts librarian, according to the Manchester Evening News.
Motremore was performing the title role in a kids' play, The Snow Queen, at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, England, before reporting to the Chamber of Secrets set in January 2002.
In late 2000, she was actually contemplating if she should stick with acting or not. After taking a role "for literally no money" in a production of Cousin Basilio in Greenwich, England, she decided to stick with her thespian career.
Motremore earned her first actors' union credit in a pantomime some 20 years ago. (In the UK, a "pantomime" usually means a light-hearted musical play based on children's stories.) Other work includes a stage version of Jane Austen's Emma; and with the Red Shift Theatre Company, a touring adaptation of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, and Hamlet -- First Cut, an early version of William Shakespeare's play.
GEMMA JONES (Madam Poppy Pomfrey)
Jones plays Pomfrey, Hogwarts nurse who runs the hospital wing and is keeper of very effective magical remedies.
She often has played memorable mothers in some of the best-known UK films to be shown in America. Many of her movies also are period dramas. Her credits include Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), as Renee Zellweger's (Bridget's) mom (a movie also also starred Moaning Myrtle, actress Shirley Henderson); and Sense and Sensibility (1995), as the widowed mother of Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet; and as a determined parent wanting to prove her son's innocence in The Winslow Boy (1999).
Versatile character actress Jones was born Jennifer Jones on 4 December 1942 in London, England, daughter of UK actor Griffith Jones. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and won its Gold Medal honor in 1962. Just after graduation in 1963, she appeared on the stage with Peter O'Toole in Baal. Most of Jones' career has focused upon the theater.
Jones made her film debut in 1971 in Ken Russell's The Devils.. She has not been limited only to "mums," for example, playing the Lady Queensbury in Wilde, a biopic of playwright Oscar Wilde. She also headlined The Duchess of Duke Street (1976-80), a BBC series that also aired on U.S. public television. She played a working class cook who rises to hostess at one of London's finest hotels.
Other film and TV credits include The Feast of July, On the Black Hill, Longitude, Cotton Mary, The Theory of Flight, Jane Eyre and The Phoenix and the Carpet.
Jones' stage career has included Sally Bowles in Cabaret, Goneril in Shakespeare's King Lear and Blance DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. She has done many other Shakespeare dramas, including A Winter's Tale, Macbeth and A Midsummer's Night Dream.
JULIAN GLOVER (Voice of Aragog)
The BBC announced Glover will be the voice of Aragog, the acromantula that rules the spider kingdom in the Forbidden Forest. Glover is probably well suited to the role, as his most memorable turns have been as menacing characters.
Glover was General Veers, an ally of Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back (1980); Aristotle Kristatos, a villain facing off with James Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981); and an American Nazi who battles Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
However, Glover has not just portrayed the bad guys; he is just well-known for them. He was born 27 March 1935 in London, England, to two journalists. He began acting as a child with the National Youth Theatre. He studied theater at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and made his adult stage debut in 1953 in Tom Jones. Theater has been his main arena of work since the mid-1980s. He put in a number of seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Glover's movie and TV career includes literary adaptations, such as Wuthering Heights (1970), Ivanhoe (1982), The Secret Garden (1987); and Treasure Island (1989) with Charlton Heston. He has appeared in American television, such as QB VII,Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and Mandela. He appeared in the first major Merchant-Ivory historic film, Heat and Dust (1982). Other credits include King Ralph, The Fourth Protocol, The Dance of Shiva and most recently, Vatel in 2000.
His British TV credits began in 1960s with Androcles and the Lion and An Age of Kings, costarring with Sean Connery and Dame Judi Dench. Other credits include guest spots on The Avengers, Dr. Who, The Saint, James King, The Sweeney and The Professionals. He also appeared in two series, Dombrey and Son and Wish Me Luck.
TOBY JONES (Voice of Dobby)
Stage and character actor Jones provides the voice of the intense Malfoy house elf who tries to warn Harry of imminent danger.
Jones' stage work in 2002 included his own production, The Table Show, as John Jump, an introverted man who unleashes his chaotic imagination onstage. He also won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Play that I Wrote, a biographical work about the British comedy duo Morecambe & Wise. It is written by Hamish McColl and Sean Foley and was directed by Gilderoy Lockhart himself, Kenneth Branagh.
Jones was born in England. He studied drama and graduated with honors from the University of Manchester.
His film work is mostly for the British cinema and includes Orlando, Naked, Simon Magus and The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz. He also has appeared in Hollywood financed movies shot in Europe, such as Cousin Bette, Ever After (with Drew Barrymore), Les Miserables and Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
Jones' TV work includes the miniseries Victoria and Albert, Out of Hours, The Aristocrats and the programs The Way We Live Now and Midsomer Murders.
SHIRLEY HENDERSON (Moaning Myrtle)
Moaning Myrtle seems to about 14 to 16 years old, but she'll be played by a 35-year-old adult! Shirley Henderson, star of a number of critically acclaimed independent films out of the UK, has taken the role of the weeping restroom ghost.
Henderson may have won the role because she looks very young and has the voice of a girl. She was born in 1966 in Kincardine, Fife County, Scotland, and is the eldest of three girls. She showed a flare for acting and singing, which she honed as a member of school drama clubs. She was featured on a local talent show and performed in local music clubs, with her father serving as sound man.
After a one-year drama program at Kirkcaldy Technical College, Henderson was admitted to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. After three years of study, she alternated between the stage and the small screen. She did stage work with the National Theatre in England and made her mark in UK television with Hamish Macbeth in 1995.
The title character, played by Robert Carlyle, was an easygoing policeman, and she played his girlfriend. The two were reunited a year later in Trainspotting, Danny Boyle's raw drama about heroin addicts. Also in 1995, she earned critical acclaim for her role in The Maidenstone at the Hampstead Theatre, London, described as having "fairy-like ferocity."
Other roles were as soprano Leonora Braham in Topsy Turvy, about Gilbert and Sullivan's creation of The Mikado; as Debbie, a lonely single mother in Michael Winterbottom's Wonderland, with Ian Hart (Quirrell); Jude, the best friend of Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones's Diary; and again with Winterbottom in The Claim. In 2002, she will appear as part of the 1970s Manchester, England music scene in 24 Hour Party People, working a third time with Winterbottom, as well as in Doctor Sleep and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.
 Padley in her guest spot on Casualty. |
GEMMA PADLEY (Penelope Clearwater)
Padley plays Penelope, the Ravenclaw who is Percy Weasley's girlfriend and is a victim of the basilisk in Chamber.
Padley is fairly new to acting, with most credits on UK television. She had a role in In a Land of Plenty, a 10-part BBC-TV miniseries about four decades in a family's lives. She also appeared in Other Animals on the BBC and had a guest spot on the British medical soap opera/drama, Casualty. She also starred in the movie Juliette, directed by Esther Haggerty.
HUGH MITCHELL (Colin Creevey)
Mitchell plays Colin Creevey, the eager-to-please first year who idolizes Harry Potter and starts a fan club. Mitchell, of Winchester, England, is a newcomer. He was born in 1989.
The HP Galleries reported that he will be paid £45,000 ($65,000) for his work, and after numerous auditions Warner Bros. awarded him the role.
MARK WILLIAMS (Arthur Weasley)
Williams plays the friendly father of seven and Ministry of Magic official with a fascination for Muggle items. Williams primarily has appeared in funny fare on British television, but he also has pursued memorable roles in movies, such as Wabash, a stuttering tailor who narrates Romeo and Juliet in the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love. He also appeared as Horace, one of Cruella de Vil's clumsy henchmen, in the 1996 live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians.
Williams was born in England in 1959. He is best known for his assorted nuts on the BBC-TV comedy sketch series The Fast Show (1994-97). This program was so named because many of the sketches were no longer than a minute. His characters included Jesse, an out-of-it bum who would declare, "This week I've tried..." and Patrick Nice, who would end sentences with, "...which was nice." (This show is known as Brilliant! in the U.S. and airs on BBC America.)
Williams appeared in two Fast Show spinoffs -- Jumpers for Goalposts, where he appeared with costar Paul Whitehouse, and Ted and Ralph, also with Whitehouse and another co-star, Charles Higson. His other British TV credits include Stuff, Kinsey, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, The Strangerers and Red Dwarf, a cult science fiction show. He also crossed paths with Harry Potter stars, too: Williams played an exterminator in The Borrowers opposite Tom Felton (Malfoy), and as a professor in Gormenghast, which also starred Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon), Fiona Shaw (Aunt Petunia) and Zoe Wanamaker (Madam Hooch).
Williams also has logged time on UK stages. He toured from 1983-85 on a boat with the Mikron Theatre Company. He has appeared in Fanshen at the National Theatre; The City Wives Confederacy at the Greenwich Theatre; Doctor of Honour at the Cheek by Jowl Theatre Company; and Moscow Gold, Singer and As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
JASON ISAACS (Lucius Malfoy)
Jason Isaacs plays the calculating father of Draco Malfoy. Isaacs is a versatile Briton who can jump from icy villain to kind soul from one film to the next. He can switch accents and characterizations easily and has played both Yanks and Englishmen.
In 1999, he was a priest in The End of the Affair, with Fiennes. In 2000, his notable nasty role was in The Patriot (2000) as Col. William Tavington. This was a man who would not hesitate in shooting kids or burning American colonists in a church because they are rebelling against Great Britain.
After The Patriot, he was interested in moving away from big battle scenes and slaughter. So he turned up as Chaz, a drag queen who is best friends with Charlize Theron in Sweet November (2001). In his next movie, Black Hawk Down, Isaacs went back into military mode, this time playing a U.S. Army officer, a captain in the Rangers. (The movie was about the disastrous invasion of Somalia in late 1993.)
Isaacs was born in Liverpool, England, on 6 June 1963, third of four sons of a merchant. He was ready to follow his brothers into the white-collar professions -- they had become a doctor, a lawyer and an accountant. He enrolled at Bristol University and earned a law degree. However, the stage drew his attention -- at first he said jokingly, as a way to meet girls -- so he applied to and was accepted into the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
However, he got serious about the acting craft at this famous school, whose alumni include the late Sir Laurence Olivier. His fellow students included actor Sean Pertwee and future film director Paul Anderson, who later cast Pertwee and him in three of his movies. Isaacs made his film debut in a bit part in The Tall Guy (1989) with Emma Thompson and Jeff Goldblum.
On the stage, Isaacs won acclaim for playing Louis in the Royal National Theatre's Angels in America, Parts I/II. He also spent two seasons on Capital City on BBC-TV, as well as Taggart and Civvies. The last show, about a disturbed soldier trying to readjust to civilian life after the army, was a bit controversial in the UK.
Isaacs has been seen in his friend Anderson's movies Event Horizon, Soldier and Shopping. He attracted global attention as a genius scientist, Dr. Quincy, in Armageddon (with Bruce Willis), which eventually led to The Patriot. Other credits include the U.S. TV miniseries The Last Don II, Dragonheart, with Dennis Quaid; Divorcing Jack, St. Ives, Hotel, Dangerous Lady, Passionada and The Fix.
In 2002, Isaacs will be seen two other films, The Tuxedo and Windtalkers (a World War II film). The Malfoy role will allow Isaacs to stay in the UK while his wife, Emma Hewitt, gives birth to their child.
CHRISTIAN COULSON (Tom Riddle)
Coulson plays Riddle, the evil young version of Lord Voldemort who tries to destroy Harry. Coulson is a native of England and was born in 1978. He attended Bedford Modern School for his secondary education.
Coulson is not new to sorcery -- he plays Ben Stemson on Weirdsister College, the fourth series (season) of the British Worst Witch TV program. Ben, however, was not a wizard, but a regular guy whose TV mom manages the nearby Misery's Cafe.
Coulson also starred as Matt Radlett in the BBC-TV adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate. This novel was written by Nancy Mitford, sister of Jessica Mitford, a J.K. Rowling hero. He also completed roles for two other 2002 movies, Four Feathers and The Hours, costarring Nicole Kidman.
He acted with the National Youth Music Theatre and later graduated from the Cambridge University drama school in England. Coulson's university credits include Antigone, Jean Genet's The Maids, Peter Shaffer's Equus, and the title character in Bertolt Brecht's The Irresistible Rise of Arturo Ui. In 1998, Coulson returned to the Bedford Modern School to appear in a production of The Fallen.
EDWARD "ED" TUDORPOLE (Mr. Borgin)
This former pop singer portrays the owner of Borgin & Burkes, an emporium of Dark Arts items on Knockturn Alley. He was born in England about 1956.
Under the stage name "Eddie Tudor," Tudorpole was co-founder and lead vocalist of the flamboyant group Tenpole Tudor. The band dressed in outlandish medieval and swashbuckler style costumes while doing a mix of punk, pop and British dancehall. They were together from 1974 to 1981 and known for the album, Swords of a Thousand Men. After Tudorpole left in 1981, the group became "The Tudors."
In 1980, Tudorpole appeared in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, featuring punk pioneers the Sex Pistols. He sang a tune called "Who Killed Bambi?"
Tudorpole led two versions of Tenpole Tudor -- the original, and a Cajun version that failed. By the end of the 1980s, he performed in jazz and swing bands and took acting roles. He also revived Tenpole Tudor several more times.
Tudorpole has been acting steadily since 1986. His association with British pop continued with Absolute Beginners (1986), directed by Julien Temple, and Sid & Nancy (1986), about the doomed Sex Pistols singer Sid Vicious, directed by Alex Cox. More recently he was in Quills (2000) with Geoffrey Rush; Princess Caraboo (1994) with Phoebe Cates; Les Miserables; and White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) starring and directed by Clint Eastwood.
In the 1990s, Tudorpole became the second host of the British game show, The Crystal Maze. As its name implied, contestants had to solve puzzles in different themed mazes to win prizes.
ROBERT HARDY (Cornelius Fudge)
This seasoned English character actor and Shakespearian plays Fudge, the head of the United Kingdom wizarding world's Ministry of Magic.
Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy was born 29 October 1925 in Cheltanham, England. After Hardy studied at Oxford University, he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1949. Other stage work was with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Old Vic, as well as North American tours.
One of his best-known UK television roles was as Siegfried Farnon in several miniseries adaptations of James Harriot's All Creatures Great and Small, a novel about a rural English veterinarian. The TV part that won him the most acclaim was as the title prime minister of Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, a 1981 miniseries. His impersonation of Churchill was so well regarded he reprised it in The Women He Loved and the US miniseries War and Remembrance.
Hardy primarily has appeared in UK productions, including the classic The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), with his friend, Richard Burton; the 1994 Frankenstein, directed by Kenneth Branagh (Lockhart); and Sense and Sensibility, starring Emma Thompson and Gemma Jones (Poppy Pomfrey). He also appeared in the children's farce Thunderpants (2002) with Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley).
He did have some roles in American miniseries, including Gulliver's Travels (1996), with Warwick Davis (Flitwick); and The 10th Kingdom (2000).
Hardy is also an expert on the longbow, having learned how to use the weapon for a production of William Shakespeare's Henry V. He wrote a book abou the longbow's history and also serves as a weapons consultant to the Mary Rose Trust, a group restoring a 1511 English warship in Portsmouth. He also was named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to acting.
EDWARD RANDELL, 13, is rumored for Justin Finch-Fletchley, according to a fan who E-mailed the HP Galleries. Randell attends school in London.
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