Harry Potter Set Experience Nearly Forced Rupert Grint to Quit Acting
Acting is a line of work which is often physically and mentally demanding.
Doubly so in case of kid actors, like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played the main character trio throughout all eight Harry Potter movies.
They had to start young and devote all of their teenage years to filming. For example, Rupert Grint started playing in those movies when he was 11, and finished with the second part of Deathly Hallows when he was 22.
And as he says in an interview with Bustle, it was a heavy burden on him:
"Potter was so full on — [filming] all year, then we'd promote the rest of the time. It was quite suffocating."
Despite the experience he gained on the sets, and worldwide fame, by the end of the saga, as Rupert says, he was not sure whether he wanted to be an actor anymore:
"I wanted a break, to reflect on everything... It was an out-of-body experience for a while, but I think we finished at the right time. If we continued, it could've gone downhill."
And of course the problem of heavy association with one particular role, to the point where people start mixing up the actor and the character, which often plagues even adult veteran actors, was especially bad for him: "I answer to it, if someone calls me Ron. It's my second name."
Rupert can take this treatment in stride, because, as he admits, he himself is not sure where he ends and Ron Weasley begins: "In the movies, we merged into one. By the end of it, I was playing myself. The lines were blurred."
But then again, similarities between him and his character were uncanny to start with: not only they were redheads with names that started with "R", Rupert Grint's parents also had a big family and Rupert was one of their five children.
However, over time Rupert managed to untangle himself from Ron, and rediscover his taste for acting.
While none of his roles since then were comparable to starring in one of the biggest franchises of our time, he enjoyed moderate success in his career, with his latest notable role being that of Julian Pearce, one of the main characters in the psychological horror series Servant.