Harry Potter has been such a huge phenomenon in the last few years and it is one of the largest franchises. This should guarantee a lifetime of fame to all the actors involved. However, at least one actor from the popular film franchise has managed to remain quite anonymous and he enjoys it that way.
Harry Melling, who played Dudley Dursley, appeared in five of the eight films. Playing the poor-spirited and bullying cousin of the titular protagonist, the actor, only 12-years-old at the time, was in the very first film which almost immediately became a global success.
But he has managed to stay out of the limelight since the last film came out. He also lost a lot of weight during the course of the films and, according to the actor, this has helped reduce his visibility.
“I think it was an unconscious thing when it started to happen,” he told People magazine. “I went to drama school when I was 18 and that’s kind of where the weight shifted, not for any major need on my side, but it’s just something that happened.
And I’ve done a lot since drama school, went to do lots of theatre. I think one of the blessings of that sort of stage in my life was the fact that I didn’t get recognized.” He felt like this afforded him a new start, which he found useful.
Dudley Dursley’s role in the franchise, of course, ended much before the final film. Melling did film scenes for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 but the scene between Dudley and Harry was cut and so the actor was only glimpsed at the start of the film.
Dudley and the Dursleys in general were not exactly unimportant characters in both Harry’s life and within the films. They were some of the first characters the audience encountered. And many fans feel Dudley is quite underrated. Still, Melling is quite busy nowadays with his own projects and has appeared in Netflix’s The Old Guard, The Queen’s Gambit and The Devil All The Time with Robert Pattinson.
