Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis opened up about his experience working on the franchise.
During a panel discussion at Rhode Island Comic Con on Sunday, Lewis, famed for his role as Neville Longbottom in the series, shared his thoughts on why Harry Potter child stars avoided the challenges faced by many other child actors.
He initially jokes, “we’re very good at hiding all of those stories,” but later in the conversation credited the “friendships” developed with his castmates, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.
Lewis said, “One of the questions that was asked earlier about the pitfalls of being a child actor that we seem to have avoided, I would posit that a large degree of that was because we were all there together.”
“Frequently, you hear many stories of how they were the sole actor in that movie and having to carry that movie on their own and all of the pressures and anxieties that come with that. Whereas, we were all kind together,” he added.
Noting that “a lot of the fears that we had were all shared and the thing not really of anymore for anyone else in the world will never be able to understand really what we went through and how it affected our personal lives except each other.”
The actor went on to say that “one of the things that I’ve carried with me is those friendships,” adding, “I don’t go back and read the books. One of the only things that I still kind of hold onto is those relationships that we forged throughout those films.”