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'I Had To Put Blinders On': Chris Columbus Reveals Key Focus During 'Harry Potter' Casting
Chris Columbus shared what he looks out for while casting children for ventures, along with how he cast Danielle Radcliffe in Harry Potter.
Home Alone director Chris Columbus has created a legacy with his impressive work in films that have turned out to be classics. He shared with Demi Lovato about his own process on how to cast kids in onscreen ventures, and the key is to find the right parents.
Columbus appeared in Lovato’s Child Star documentary and truthfully revealed his experience with Macaulay Culkin after Home Alone and its success, which helped in his casting for his next big project, which was Harry Potter.
He recalled that Culkin garnered huge stardom from Home Alone, which was not expected. Columbus shared that it was nothing like Harry Potter, where one was aware of its probable success. He spoke about coming from a working-class family and having witnessed a couple of times when children suddenly become the breadwinner for their families.
While recalling the casting experience for Harry Potter, the director revealed, “I had to put blinders on because that’s all I was hearing everywhere. You go on the street, you go into a pub, you go anywhere, and people are saying, ‘Who are you gonna cast? Who’s gonna be Harry Potter, who’s gonna be Harry Potter?’”
He continued, “You take that information and you bring it back to the actor and the actor’s parents: ‘This is gonna get pretty intense.'” Columbus made an effort to make sure the child actors he was featured in the iconic films were aware of what they were signing up for as stars like Radcliffe were asked to sign for multiple movies at once.
He shared that it was the rest of the life of the child star and that would be their "legacy,” which they have to learn to live with. According to The Guardian, he previously revealed not knowing Culkin’s troubled home life that he was dealing with.
This experience made him find children to feature in the movie with a good foundation in their homes. In the documentary, he told Lovato that he cannot have an actor go home to “a really sort of shaky environment for the sake of a film. It’s not worth it. It was as important to cast the parents as it was to cast the kids.”
Child Star Documentary is available to be streamed on Hulu.
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