“Sometimes child acting can get a negative stigma. I just never wanted that to be me. I didn’t fall in love with being in Harry Potter,” Melling said.

Harry Potter actor didn’t want to be ‘shackled’ to major franchise or ‘trapped within the child-actor’ role

"Sometimes child acting can get a negative stigma. I just never wanted that to be me. I didn’t fall in love with being in Harry Potter," Melling said.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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December 30, 2025 5:33 p.m. ET

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Harry Melling and Daniel Radcliffe in 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'. Credit:

For Harry Potter alum Harry Melling, being in a major film franchise at the beginning of his acting career wasn't so magical.

The actor appeared as Dudley Dursley in five Harry Potter films, from when he was 10 years old until he was 21: 2001’s *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone*, 2002’s *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*, 2004’s *Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*, 2007’s *Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix* and 2010’s *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1*. But as he looked back on the start of his career in an interview with *The Hollywood Reporter*, he revealed his struggles with being "shackled" to a major franchise.

Melling, 36, opened up about how he doesn't "want people to know" him, which is why he's taken on such different roles post-Potter.

"It’s very contrary to what this industry wants you to be, and that for me is the biggest compliment someone could ever pay me," Melling said. "I don’t want people to have an understanding of me prior to — I mean, obviously I kind of f---ed it up doing Harry Potter."

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Melling continued, "But I really don’t want people to have an understanding of who I am going into a movie. I want them just to see the character, which is maybe why it feels eclectic and you can’t pigeonhole it."

Melling added that he was "a wee babe, really" when he starred in the Potter films, "but people hold onto that."

Referring to a recent interview where he had said he's "spent [his] entire life running away from" Harry Potter, Melling admitted he "said it in a jokey sort of way."

"But yeah, to establish yourself so early as in this huge franchise — it was never a destination," he explained. "At 10, or whatever, there was so much more to do. In a weird way, I knew that getting trapped within the child-actor thing was not going to allow me to do the other things that I wanted to do. Now I do theater and work with the likes of the Coen Brothers, work in America, and do so much work in U.K. independent film."

Melling wondered if he does "so much" because he had a constant internal drive to "keep going" and "don't fall into" being pigeonholed as a child actor.

"Sometimes child acting can get a negative stigma," he said. "I just never wanted that to be me. I didn’t fall in love with being in Harry Potter. I fell in love with the concept of people being many things, and that’s the thing that I wanted to spend my life doing. That felt very precious to me and was something that I really wanted to have a go at doing in my life."

Harry Melling on his evolution from 'Harry Potter' to Edgar Allan Poe

How 'The Queen's Gambit' star Harry Melling went from 'Harry Potter' to prolific character actor

Melling remembered being surrounded by so many "incredible stage actors" on the set of Harry Potter movies, which helped instill a love of theater in himself from a young age.

"Even when I was doing Harry Potter, I was obsessed with theater," he said. "A lot of the more senior actors in the Harry Potter world were all these incredible stage actors — and I wanted to have that career. Then going to drama school changes what you want in coming out the other side. But at the same time, Harry Potter is this huge, huge franchise, and I never wanted to be in any way shackled to it. I always wanted to have a really big career and try lots of different things."

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Since wrapping his time in the Harry Potter world, Melling has gone on to appear in multiple Coen Brothers films, including *The Ballad of Buster Scruggs*, as well as *The Queen's Gambit, The Pale Blue Eye,* and most recently starred opposite Alexander Skarsgard in the gay BDSM rom-com *Pillion* (releasing in the U.S. on Feb. 6, 2026).

Melling recently shot down speculation that he would return to the wizarding world for HBO's upcoming Harry Potter TV series in an interview with* British GQ *in November (child actor Amos Kitson is taking over the role of Dudley).

"I don't think so," he said when asked if he would return. "I think it's great it's getting done again. If they wanna tell the story in another way, it's an amazing opportunity to have... Because it's serious, right? They have more time to tell the story. I don't know, in a strange way, I feel that I've spent my entire life running away from it. It kind of is the fire under my belly."

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