Harry Potter is how old?!
It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint first made their film debuts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first movie adaptation in the beloved series.
Back in 2001, the movie based on the best-selling books by J.K. Rowling hit theaters across the world and audiences fell in love with the movie about an orphaned boy who enrolls in a school of wizardry.
Director Chris Columbus recently told Variety that the initial filming experience with the child actors playing Harry, Hermione and Ron was not necessarily magical. "In the first film, there was not a lot of professional experience between the three leads. That's why that film was filled with so many cuts. I could only really shoot, for the first three months, a close up of one of the actors before they would lose concentration," Chris said in the article. "The first couple of weeks, all the kids were so excited to be part of the Harry Potter film, they were basically just smiling into the cameras. I couldn't get them to stop smiling, and it really became an exercise and acting class for me as a director."
"By the time we got to the second film, we were able to do tracking shots and the kids could shoot a master and have a conversation within those shots," the director continues in Variety. "They became very professional by the time they got to Chamber of Secrets, and then by the time we did Prisoner of Azkaban [which Columbus produced], you could basically shoot the entire film in 15 single takes if you wanted."
Two decades later, Harry Potter is still close to fan's hearts. And by the sound of it, the film series is still something that means a lot to the cast and crew behind the franchise.
Chris and his Harry Potter lead actor keep in touch "probably the most" according to the director. They just have never lost that magical touch.
To read more on where the entire cast is today, visit here.