"It's the sort of ghost-like emptiness that he has, where he's very lonely and by himself, that can set your mind deep in thought," he says. "Luckily, you spend 90 per cent of the day off-camera, so you spend a lot more time as Tom than you do as Draco."

"It doesn't make me smile; it makes me laugh. It's so funny," he says. "I love seeing us through the years. We were all so round in the face.

"If they had changed the cast, it would have made the franchise not as sustainable in terms of picking up steam," Felton adds. "I think the fact they're using the same people makes the fans feel like they are part of the same franchise. It's not like Bond, where they can keep swapping Potters around and hope for the best."

"He's no longer interested in calling Harry names. He's more interested in stepping on his nose and trying to rip his head off. It's gone from schoolyard bullying to real bullying. It's time to man up and do a bit more damage."

Felton says he's spent a lot of time discussing his character with director David Yates, and the two have decided there's more to Malfoy than his nasty exterior. "He's really a misunderstood little boy who is surrounded by these incredibly evil family members."

"Somebody asked me the other day whether I'd be a Bond villain, and I thought, yeah, why not? I have thoroughly enjoyed playing the villain."

So who would be his ideal Bond baddie? He strokes an imaginary cat on his lap.

"It seems wrong not to have some sort of animal, like a cat thing, or they could give me a nice scar on my face. I could even speak Russian," he adds, giving it the full Boris Badenov. "Why not?"

Felton, who is the youngest of four boys -- "You get regular beatings," he says, deadpan.

"And you never get a spot on the couch," -- says his grandfather vets his lyrics.

"He makes sure they're proper English. He knows better ways of phrasing than I do." Speaking of his family with obvious affection, Felton says that his grandfather was his chaperone during the filming of the second Harry Potter movie.

"The director saw him -- he's got a sort of Charles Darwin beard, my grandpa -- and asked him to be in the film. You can see him in the movie, sitting at the wizard's bench with Dumbledore," says Felton, with obvious affection. "He came to chaperone and left with a job."