Brendan Gleeson recently chatted about his initial reluctance to take on the
Harry Potter role as Mad-Eye Moody in a new interview with AV Club, as part of promotion for the release of his film,
Calvary. Gleeson commented on how worried he was to work alongside child actors at first, his ease when he found the stars as 'really lovely', and working with son Domnhall, who of course played Bill Weasley in the final two installments of the series.
Quote:
You appeared in three of the Harry Potter films.
Brendan Gleeson: I didn’t want to. I signed up for one. I didn’t really want to do a franchise. That’s not my thing. Because I taught for 10 years. I said if I go on and there’s a bunch of brats here, I’m not going to be able to live with it. So I was kind of slightly terrified about the whole notion. And my kids were really excited about me doing it. But I signed up and I went onto the set, and it was a really positive thing. The kids were really lovely. They were allowed to grow up at a proper pace. They weren’t all ha-has, though I remember being told not to get Dan [Radcliffe] giggling because it’d be really difficult to get him to stop. I played a teacher, and I had been a teacher for 10 years, so all this throwing chalk and dusters at people and stuff—I remember that from my own childhood. But also, I’m sure I was able to exorcise some of the demons from my own teaching career. It was great.
And trying to find the look, trying to find the eye. I assumed [Moody] looked like a cyclops. But the more we talked about it, we wanted something he actually made as a wizard. So the creature effects—all that stuff and working with that eye—were ****ing fantastic. Massive respect for the craftsmanship—kind of old-fashioned, in a way. Before the CGI just about took over in number four, particularly, which is my big one. But we kept the eye in-camera. That sort of magic—that’s real magic in cinema.
You have a scene with your son, Domhnall. That’s not a first.
Gleeson: No. He announced my death in Harry Potter. And I did a short with him with Martin McDonagh, John’s brother, and we got the Oscar for that—“Six Shooter.” He was selling Pringles on a train in that. It was very funny. He also directed myself and Brian, his brother, in a short, so I’ve worked with him on a number of occasions. It’s good. It’s a bonus. I couldn’t have dared hope that I’d be able to work with my sons in that way, because you don’t know how that’s going to work out, mixing the professional and the personal. But we found a way of not undermining each other and of valuing each other’s opinion, which has been fantastic. A real bonus.