‘Harry Potter’ Star Rupert Grint Confesses Why He Can’t Watch the Later Movies

Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, said he is more comfortable watching the first few movies in the franchise instead of the later movies.

In a new interview with Radio Times, the actor, now 30, said he finds it easy to detach himself from the child actor he was in the early Potter movies.

“I think those early ones are OK. More time has passed,” Grint explained. “I can detach myself a bit more from that kid. I did see Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone not long ago, for the first time since the premiere, and I actually enjoyed looking back. But the more recent ones I definitely couldn’t do.”

Grint said the he can “probably go up” to the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

While Grint might have trouble watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, he does enjoy seeing his former co-stars in real life. After all, they are the only ones who understand what it was like to be a part of the massively popular franchise.

“We have those chats. Definitely. Because we’re all carving out very different journeys. And we have this shared experience that connects us all,” Grint told Radio Times. “They are the only people that really understand. I think David Yates [the director of the final four Potter films] once said we’re all like astronauts. Only astronauts really know what it’s like to go to space.”

Elsewhere in the new interview, Grint said he felt guilty about the extra attention his four younger siblings got at school when the Potter films were coming out.

“It wasn’t their decision,” he explained. “It was my choice to do this thing and it’s affected everyone in a different way. Not always in an unbearable, negative way, but it’s quite a strange existence sometimes.”

Grint also felt lucky to avoid falling into trouble like Hollywood child actors, especially after recently working with Lindsay Lohan on the series Sick Note.

“Her history is fascinating. I guess the difference is we didn’t film Harry Potter in Hollywood. It was in Watford,” Grint explained. “But I often feel like people were waiting for it to happen, they were ready for us to step out of line. It didn’t come to that for us. I guess having a really good, strong family had something to do with it. But, yes, at times you definitely felt like it was thin ice. You could easily have gone wrong, in lots of different ways.”

Since the Potter franchise ended in 2011, Grint has continued to appear in indie films and on television. His newest project is playing Inspector Crome in a new BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders with John Malkovich as the famous detective Hercule Poirot. The three-episode series aired from Wednesday to Friday in the U.K. It will be available on Amazon in the U.S. at a later date.

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