18 Wild Behind-The-Scenes Facts About “Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone” That You’ll Be Shocked You Didn’t Know Sooner
With the holidays fast approaching, there is no better time of year to start a Harry Potter rewatch than now. Of course, this means kicking things off with the first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
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The first Harry Potter film was released in 2001 and directed by Chris Columbus. Columbus would return to direct the first of many sequels, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
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So whether you’re watching the film for a millionth time or simply looking for a bit of nostalgia today, here are 18 fascinating facts about the first Harry Potter film that kickstarted a cinematic empire:
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1. Steven Spielberg turned down directing the film.
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“I chose to turn down the first Harry Potter to basically spend that next year and a half with my family, my young kids growing up,” Spielberg said in an interview for Reliance Entertainment in 2023. “So I sacrificed a great franchise, which even today looking back [I’m] very happy to have done, to be with my family.”
2. Columbus was then up against about 25 other directors to take over.
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As he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2021, he asked to be the “last director in the room” in an effort to leave a “lasting impression.”
3. Columbus passed on directing Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man to direct Sorcerer’s Stone.
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“I really probably heard the day before I got the Spider-Man offer, that I got Harry Potter. And whoever it was, was like, ‘Is he crazy? How could he pass up Spider-Man?’ and part of me felt that way because it’s probably something I was waiting my entire life to do,” Columbus told Screen Rant in 2021. “But I’m glad I decided to go with Potter. I’m happy about that.”
4. Though Sorcerer’s Stone was Daniel Radcliffe’s first theatrical film release, it wasn’t his first time working with Maggie Smith, who played Professor McGonagall in the films.
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Radcliffe and Smith appeared in the BBC’s two-part TV production of David Copperfield in 1999. In a statement following Smith’s death last month, Radcliffe reflected on meeting the acclaimed actor.
“I remember feeling nervous to meet her and then her putting me immediately at ease. She was incredibly kind to me on that shoot, and then I was lucky enough to go on working with her for another 10 years on the Harry Potter films,” he wrote.
5. In fact, it was Radcliffe’s work in David Copperfield that got him hired to play Harry.
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“He was only in it for a few minutes but I thought, ‘This is Harry Potter.’ I told the casting director that I’d found Harry but she told me I’d never get him as his parents were in the industry and they don’t want him to be overexposed, which he would be with this role. That was a hurdle to overcome,” Columbus told the Independent in 2021. “About a month later, [producer] David Heyman went to some West End production and in the audience was Daniel Radcliffe with his parents. David was aware of how badly we wanted Dan for the film, so in the intermission he approached his father and somehow convinced him to come in to audition. And that was how we found Harry Potter.”
6. For his first audition, Radcliffe read the scene where Harry, Ron, and Hermione discover that Hagrid is hiding a dragon egg.
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“I was totally scared out of my wits. It was so terrifying,” Radcliffe told Vanity Fair in 2001 of his first audition. “You go in there with these really important people, and you just kind of feel really small. So then I went to three other auditions after that, and then they phoned me up and asked me if I wanted to play the part. It was probably the single most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.”
7. Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the film series, almost played Harry.
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“Tom was a great actor as well, so we thought, let’s just dye Tom’s hair, give him a scar, give him the glasses and let’s see,” Columbus told the Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “He did a great Harry Potter reading. The problem is you can really kind of tell when an 11- or 12-year-old kid’s hair is dyed. He was so good at Malfoy. I just couldn’t pass that up. I knew Tom had to play Malfoy.”
8. After Radcliffe was cast as Harry, Felton was considered to play Ron Weasley before he was ultimately cast as Malfoy.
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“I reckon I got the part because I was nonchalant,” Felton told the Guardian in 2022, “and had no idea what anyone was on about. Wizards in cupboards under the stairs? And with three older brothers, you learn to be confident quickly. I think Chris Columbus, the director, recognised this slight disinterest and arrogance in me, which he thought could work for Malfoy.”
9. Emma Watson wished upon a wishbone for her role as Hermione Granger.
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“My dad did a roast on a Sunday, and he gave me the wishbone, and I obviously made the wish that I would get this role. I still have that wishbone upstairs in my jewelry box,” Emma told the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 2014.
10. Rosie O’Donnell asked to play Molly Weasley for free, but Columbus turned her down.
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On her talk show in 2000, Rosie O’Donnell said she called Columbus and offered to play Molly Weasley for free since she loved the books so much. “For free, I said this. ‘I’ll come over there for free. Just let me know when I have to be there.’ He’s like, ‘Sorry, but we’re not having any Americans [act in the film],” she said. “I couldn’t even get them to let me audition.”
11. Alan Rickman was told snippets of his character Severus Snape’s journey in the series before they were revealed in the books or to other cast and crew members.
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In excerpts of Rickman’s diaries posthumously published by the Guardian in 2022, Rickman reportedly wrote in October 2000 ahead of filming the first film, “Talk to Joanne Rowling again and she nervously lets me in on a few glimpses of Snape’s background. Talking to her is talking to someone who lives these stories, not invents them. She’s a channel – bubbling over with, ‘Well, when he was young, you see, this, that and the other happened’ – never, I wanted so & so…'”
12. David Thewlis was considered to play Professor Quirrell before Ian Hart was cast. Thewlis would later join the series as Remus Lupin, first appearing in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
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13. The meddling Hogwarts ghost Peeves, played by Rik Mayall, was cut from the film.
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“I loved his anarchy, but it didn’t fit,” producer David Heyman reportedly told Empire magazine in 2021. In fact, there’s a push to release a three-hour cut of the film, which would include Peeves’s scenes.
“We have to put Peeves back in the movie, who was cut from the movie!” Columbus told the Wrap in 2021.
14. Mayall was adored on set, but that might’ve unintentionally been a problem.
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“The only problem was that he was too bloody funny. We were supposed to be terrified but he just made us laugh. I think that’s the main reason they cut it,” Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom, told the Independent in 2021.
15. Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid, wore a stick-on beard that was “so uncomfortable.”
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“It was so uncomfortable, you can’t imagine,” he said on The Rosie O’Donnell Show in 2001. “They used the glue they used for…I think they use it for sewing up wounds. Instead of using stitches, they use this particular glue. Great to go on. Coming off was a nightmare.”
16. While filming the scene where numerous owls perch themselves outside the Dursley family’s home, Fiona Shaw, who played Petunia, had “a dead little mouse” hanging from her apron to keep the animals’ attention.
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“Because the camera was behind the owls, they had this tendency to look back at the camera, so to stop the owls looking at the movement behind them, they hung a dead little mouse from my apron. That’s Hollywood,” Shaw told the Independent in 2021.
17. The candles hanging from the Great Hall started to burn through the clear string that held them up, and some even fell to the ground.
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“We had to get everybody out of the set — and then we shot it two more times, telling ourselves, ‘We’re just going to add CGI candles,” Columbus told NYT in 2021.
18. Finally, Columbus’s daughter Eleanor played Susan Bones in the Sorting Hat scene.
