In regard to the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone cast, the diehard fans, HP purists and the author herself got their wish: most of the actors are from the United Kingdom. This decision to go with the UK cast contributes greatly to the book’s British flavor. Director Chris Columbus and his crew have assembled a team with vast experience in English theater, television and movies. Zoe Wanamaker, though born in the U.S., grew up in England.

The only American cast was Verne Troyer, who plays Griphook, the Gringotts goblin who guides Harry and Hagrid to the former's vault.

The lead role of Harry Potter really stirred up some rumors. Steven Spielberg, once attached as director, wanted Haley Joel Osment for the role. Osment later said he never wanted to play Harry, and that The Sorcerer's Stone should never have been filmed. Later, a New Jersey, USA, actor, Liam Aiken (of Stepmom fame), was rumored as director Chris Columbus’ choice. And still later Ain’t It Cool News claimed a British boy, Gabriel Thomson (Enemy at the Gates,), was to be Harry. But in the end, Daniel Radcliffe became the movie crew's boy of choice.

Begin with the section below on the Hogwarts professors, or use the following links to read about other cast members. Photographs of actors, wherever possible, are of how they look in everyday life and not as characters. This was done on purpose, because these pages focus upon the actors, and not the HP characters.

Hogwarts Students
Hogwarts Staff, Ghosts and Others
Harry's Family, Friends and Acquaintances
More Ghosts, Fat Lady, Voldemort and Movie Stuntmen

THE PROFESSORS

RICHARD HARRIS (Headmaster and Professor Albus Dumbledore, Sorcerer's Stone/Chamber of Secrets)

Richard St. John Harris achieved both prominence and notoriety in his native Ireland, as well as the entire United Kingdom. He had a reputation for being feisty, intense and outspoken.

He was born 1 October 1930 in Limerick, the same city made famous by Irish-American author Frank McCourt. In his hometown, Harris was a star rugby player, but his international triumphs would be as a stage and film actor.

He was a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He worked on the stage for a number of years before making his film debut in Alive and Kicking in 1958. His breakthrough was playing a bitter coal miner in This Sporting Life in 1963. This role also earned him an Academy Award nomination (his second was 28 years later for The Field). Harris also won acclaim as a director, producer and author.

Among his movies are The Guns of Navarone, Mutiny on the Bounty and perhaps his best-known role, as King Arthur in the movie version of the musical Camelot (1967). He also revived the role on stage in runs on Broadway and in London. Harris wasn't much of a singer, but he still had good box office with the stage Camelot and recorded a 1960s pop song, "McArthur Park."

The 1970s were a rough time for him, as few of his movies were hits – about the only standouts are the western A Man Called Horse and its two sequels. Harris more often grabbed headlines for his hard drinking and wild party lifestyle and two marriages and divorces, which produced two sons.

Harris did not work much in the 1980s, but he made a comeback of sorts taking character roles in such American movies as Unforgiven and Patriot Games. His most recent notable part was as Emperor Marcus Aurelius, opposite Russell Crowe's General Maximus, in Gladiator (2000). He also is set to play Dumbledore in at least two more Harry Potter films.

In 2002, Harris also appeared as an elderly swordmaster and prisoner who trains Jim Caviezel in fighting skills in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Harris originally had rejected the Dumbledore role three times -- until the pleadings of his granddaughter, Ella Harris, changed his mind. "She said, 'Papa, I hear you're not going to be in the Harry Potter movie', and she said, 'If you don't play Dumbledore then I will never speak to you again,'" he told Zap2It.com.

Harris died 25 October 2002 after complications with chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease, a lymph cancer.

DAME MAGGIE SMITH (Minerva McGonagall)

Smith plays McGonagall, professor of Transfiguration, assistant headmistress and head of Gryffindor.

Margaret Natalie Smith was born 28 December 1934 in Ilford, Essex, England. She trained and was graduated from the Oxford Playhouse School and made her stage debut in 1952. Her first film was Nowhere to Go.

She joined the Old Vic theater in 1959, appearing in As You Like It, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Richard II. She moved to the National Theatre in London in 1963.

Smith gained American notice The VIPs. (1963). Smith won a Tony Award for Lettuce and Lovage on Broadway in 1990 and was nominated for Tonys for Night and Day and Private Lives.

Smith is a two-time Academy Award winner -- California Suite (Best Actress, 1978); and perhaps her best remembered turn, as the title character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Best Actress, 1969). She also was nominated for Best Actress for Othello (1965), Travels With My Aunt (1972) and A Room with a View (1986).

Other roles include both Sister Act movies; Hook, Death on the Nile, Murder by Death, Clash of the Titans, A Room With a View, Richard III, and Travels With My Aunt. She was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1989 for her contributions to English theater and film.

Smith's more recent credits include Tea with Mussolini (1999) and David Copperfield, a 1999 BBC miniseries with whom she costarred with Daniel Radcliffe, the future Harry Potter. Her sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, also are actors.

Smith continues as McGonagall in the upcoming HP sequels. She also appeared as a countess in Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), a role that netted her sixth Academy Award nomination (for Best Supporting Actress). She will be in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood in 2002.

ALAN RICKMAN (Severus Snape)

Rickman portrays Snape, the harsh professor of Potions and head of Slytherin House at Hogwarts.

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman was born 21 February 1946 in London to Welsh and Irish parents. He originally wanted to be a graphic artist and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Art. At age 26 he switched to acting earning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

He made his stage debut in Dangerous Liaisons, a story of intrigue among French nobles in the 18th century. Rickman’s numerous other stage credits include Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Hamlet for the Old Vic in Bristol. Rickman also has appeared in productions at the Edinburgh Festival and Sheffield Crucible.

Rickman made his mark playing several villains, but also showed a romantic side in the ghost story Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991). His best-known Hollywood roles are as a German terrorist in Die Hard (1988), opposite Bruce Willis, and as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), with Kevin Costner. He also played an actor tired of his popularity in a Spock-like half alien role in Galaxy Quest (1999), with Tim Allen.

Rickman added directing to his resume in 1997 with The Winter Guest, whose cast included Sean Biggerstaff (Oliver Wood), Emma Thompson and her real-life mom, actress Phyllida Law. Rickman also directed Guest’s 1995 stage production.

Rickman also played a barber taunted into entering a hairdressing competition in Blow Dry (2001), and as the title character in Mike Binder's comedy, The Search for John Gissing. Watch for Rickman again as Snape in the Harry sequels.

IAN HART (Professor Quirrell/Voice of Lord Voldemort)

Hart is Professor Quirrell, Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, and Lord Voldemort's instrument to get revenge on Harry.

Hart was born in 1964, one of three kids in a Catholic family living in Liverpool, England -- also home of the Beatles. It was movies built around the early Fab Four that gained Hart international attention. Twice he played singer-songwriter-guitarist John Lennon in The Hours and the Times (1991), and Backbeat (1993). He also gained attention as a Liverpudlian who goes and fights in the 1930s Spanish Civil War in Ken Loach's Land and Freedom (1995). Again he played a 1930s Liverpool man, a repressed, unemployed dad in Liam (2000).

Hart was educated in Catholic schools and by age 15 recalls being contemptuous of authority after years of instruction by priests. A counselor in grammar school suggested he join the army, but instead he became an "A" student and was offered a slot in drama school. He also began appearing on British TV on age 17, including The Monocled Mutineer and The Marksman.

After two weeks at drama school, he quit in disgust, feeling the curriculum "had nothing to do with acting," he told the Manchester Guardian.

Hart drifted from job to job -- working on a farm and in a plastics factory, and delivering cakes. Eventually he returned to the stage, putting in several seasons at the Liverpool Playhouse. His first movie role was in 1984, with The Exercise.

Hart’s career has mostly been in UK cinema, theater and TV, where he crossed paths with fellow Sorcercer’s Stone actors. He appeared with Fiona Shaw in The Butcher Boy (1997), with Robbie Coltraine in Frogs for Snakes (1998), and with Alan Rickman in Michael Collins (1996).

He also starred in Wonderland (with Moaning Myrtle actress Shirley Henderson), The End of the Affair, B. Monkey, Robinson Crusoe, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill..., Longitude, Cocozza's Way and The Closer You Get. In 2002, Hart will appear in Chen Kaige's Killing Me Softly.

WARWICK DAVIS (Professor Filius Flitwick/Goblin Bank Teller)

Davis plays Flitwick, Hogwarts professor of Charms, and a cameo as a Gringotts goblin. Davis has repeatedly criscrossed the Atlantic to appear in both United Kingdom and American movie and TV productions. His career began with a couple of instances where he was in the right place at the right time.

Davis was born 3 February 1970 in Epsom, Surrey, England. At age 11, in 1981, his grandmother told him she heard about a casting call for Return of the Jedi, seeking actors less than 4 feet tall -- it turned out to be for Ewok roles. Although George Lucas and other producers had enough Ewoks, and were reluctant to hire a child, they felt he was very talented and hired him anyway.

His second break occurred when Kenny Baker, the actor also known as R2-D2, got sick, and was asked to play Wicket, a lead Ewok role. Davis' association with Lucas continued with two Ewok movies for American TV and the hero lead in Ron Howard's Willow (1988). He returned to the Lucas fold for several roles in Star Wars -- Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), including donning a Yoda suit for scenes where the Jedi master walks.

Willow was a role written especially for him. Davis noted in his own biography that his Ewok action figure for Return of the Jedi was labeled Wicket W. Warwick.

Davis, known for numerous good guy roles, was very happy to play the evil title sprite in the low-budget Leprechaun and its five sequels. He also appeared in Labyrinth (1986) with David Bowie; Gulliver's Travels (1996) on U.S. TV with Ted Danson; in a BBC-TV adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia; the squire to Prince Valiant (1997); as Reepicheep the mouse in The Dawn Trader; and as Glimfeather the owl in The Silver Chair.

Along with his Harry Potter work, Davis has shot a U.S. miniseries version of Snow White; as Acorn in The 10th Kingdom; the BBC-TV sitcom The Fitz; and Al's Lads. Davis has done stage work with several roles in Snow White; as Smee the pirate in Peter Pan; and as the Genie of the Ring in Aladdin in Stevenage, England.

Davis also is founder and owner of Peterborough, England-based Willow Management, "the biggest agency for short actors in the world." Four of his clients, Rusty Goffe, Mike Edmonds, Raymond Griffiths and Peter Burroughs, played goblin tellers in the film. See Davis' official site, or visit the Willow Management site.

ZOË WANAMAKER (Madam Hooch)

Zoë Wanamaker is Madam Hooch, flying instructor and Quidditch referee at Hogwarts School. Wanamaker, born 13 May 1949 in New York City, is the daughter of two other actors, Chicago native Sam Wanamaker, and Charlotte Holland.

Wanamaker has lived in Great Britain since age 3, when her father moved the family during U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “witch hunts” for communists in the 1950s. She retains her U.S. citizenship.

Wanamaker attended the Central School for Speech and Drama in London. She left the school in 1970, hoping to avoid Shakespeare roles, a reaction to her father's massive obsession with the playwright. However, she did do the Bard's work during 25 years of roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. Sam Wanamaker was so admiring of Shakespeare, that he spent years striving to have the writer's Globe Theatre rebuilt (it was).

Among Zoë Wanamaker's diverse roles are Mrs. Murdstone in the BBC's David Copperfield (1999), where Daniel Radcliffe made his mark. She also appeared with Sorcerer’s Stone co-stars Richard Griffiths and Fiona Shaw in Gormenghast on the BBC, an adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s fantasy novels. She also appeard in the silly The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns on U.S. TV, and in a supporting role in Swept from the Sea, a romance movie.

Other parts were in Love Hurts, The English Wife, The Raggedy Rawney, The Countess Alice and Wilde (about the author Oscar Wilde).

Wanamaker also has been a fixture in British televison for more than 25 years, with roles in Baal, The Tragedy of Richard III, The Dog It Was that Died (by playwright Tom Stoppard), Love Hurts, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, My Family, Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe, Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years and A Dance to the Music of Time. Wanamaker has done some voice work, including Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, Creatures Fantastic and Norman Ormal: A Very Political Turtle.

One of her most prominent stage roles was the title character in a 1999 production of Sophocles' Electra. It updated the ancient Greek tragedy of a woman who plots to kill her mother, who had had her father, the king, killed. Wanamaker earned critical raves, an Olivier Award in the UK, and a U.S. Tony Award nomination.

Wanamaker also has been made an honorary Commander of the British Empire for her contributions to the arts.

She made headlines in 2001 after she complained that she and other cast members were underpaid for their Sorcerer's Stone roles, and would receive no residuals for having their likenesses used in Harry Potter video games. She probably will resolve the problem with Warner Bros. and most likely will return as Hooch in the sequels.

TO SORCERER'S STONE CAST, PART 2: HOGWARTS STUDENTS >>