Warwick Davis on acting in Harry Potter

More recently in my career, I've been very fortunate to have been cast in the Harry Potter series of films. Due to the genius of the makeup artists, I was able to play several different characters throughout those films. Sometimes two different characters within the same film, they were able to transform my look as Professor Flitwick, who's a kindly teacher of charms. They make me look like a, like quite an old man and as Grip Hook, who is quite a villainous goblin, they transformed me by giving me very big ears, very long nose, even to the extent that I had teeth, uh, which were very, very sharp, almost like a shark's teeth and very large contact lenses, which completely changed the look of my eyes. And give me a very sort of, um, soulless sort of look. As a performer it's, it's wonderful to wear these makeups because they not only transform your appearance, they give you the foundation of another character. Professor Flitwick was a fairly easy character to find, whereas Grip Hook, he's a villain he's bad. So he's very far removed from who I am, but often those sorts of characters for an actor are the most fun to play, you know, and I wanted to make them very distinctively different because of course, if I'm appearing as different characters within the same film, I have to make them poles apart. So the audience don't recognize that indeed it is the same actor. So not only do I have to change appearance, I have to change the way that I stand, the way that I walk, my body language. And of course my voice has to be very different. So professor Flitwick would talk a little bit like this, whereas Grip Hook would talk more like, um, I said, I'd get you in. I didn't say anything about getting you out. So there's a very distinct difference between how the characters sound, but it was a delight to be part of those films. And again, much like Willow and Star Wars. These will be films that will be talked about and watched for many, many decades to come.