How are you feeling now that it's all coming to an end?
It's hard to process because luckily I've kept working; if I step away and think about it, it does get terribly upsetting. Mostly upsetting because for me it was just an incredibly familiar and enjoyable process. Going to Leavesden Studios where the same group of people had been for over a decade, seeing the same faces in the cafeteria, to watch people grow -- not just the actors but all the crew. And then that extraordinary privilege of working with that cast!

It's a pretty extraordinary one!
It's like a fantasy acting league around on those canvas chairs, to get to listen to Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith and Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent and Imelda Staunton and Julie Walters and Mark Williams: the list goes on forever! It's the kind of thing that American students would pay a million quid to do for the summer, and I got to do it for free for a decade. Then, just as a bonus thrown in there, almost incidentally, I get to play Lucius Malfoy. I will miss taking him through his various travails.

He's a character who has really changed.
He became more and more believable to me, oddly. He got the pay-off that he absolutely deserved. He was this man who was heavily invested in his own power and status and looking forward to Voldemort coming back so he could take his rightful place by his side. But when Voldemort came back he saw Lucius for the vain, narcissistic power-mad vacuum that he was, and called him on it, and constantly humiliated him. Then you saw what he was like when his back was against the wall: he would turn on, and use, his son and his wife. Then he got sent to prison, and was broken by the process in prison. He came back, and literally did not know his place in the world. He couldn't even occupy his own house as the head of the household.

That must all make him a rather interesting character to play.
What's interesting is first of all to play that much change, when most of the people around me didn't get the opportunity, and then to try and work out how to pay it off. One of the many admirable things about the working process there is to watch the filmmakers, the various directors -- David Yates latterly -- and David Barron and David Heyman, really take the reins and take the films not in a different direction from the books, but own it completely as a cinematic experience.

So when we came to the last book they all had the sense that they had to deliver something that was very filmic and they had to pay off whatever they felt the audience needed to have paid off, even if the books were not interested in those areas. Some of the characters have developed along slightly different ways. So when it came to Lucius, there was this constant debate between David Yates and myself on set as we were beginning to shoot the last scenes: just what should the last moment be? Should there be a last moment? Should he die? Should he be found hiding behind a curtain? Should he stand behind Draco?

I have no idea what will end up in the final cut, if anything. Often, you had this torturous process that ends up with literally nothing in the film. But trying to find the space in a film where there's this giant action sequence and this obligation to pay off the adrenalin rush of it all, AND satisfy the audience's desire to say goodbye to all of the characters was tricky. We came back with a very brief moment which I think was perfect for what Lucius would do, but again it might be on the extras on the DVD so I'm slightly embarrassed to talk about it.

Can you tell us anything about that?
We shot a bit, one bit. The thing about the Potter films is that, as they got more and more crowded, you have to hit the ground running and chew up the scenery for the three seconds available. But it's sad to say goodbye because I thought he was an interesting and complicated character. The camera loves secrets and secret lives, and certainly with Lucius there were many layers going on. There was how he wanted the world to see him; what he managed to put out there, which was not what he wanted the world to see; and then there's what's really going on, which is this rather cowardly and egocentric man. And racist, a terrible racist! He's been left by the side of the road and constantly hankers back to a time that he thought was better.

You said that the character became more believable as he went on...
Not more believable, but I guess there was more frailty in him. No one was ever going to LIKE Lucius, but it was easier to understand him as time went by. Everyone knows how it feels, wanting to suck up to the bully and the bully bullying you even more for it. He's hoist by his own petard. I guess everyone can recognise -- not in their own behaviour -- what bad parenting is, and what can happen when the id is out of control, and what rampant narcissism is, and how racism is fear and ignorance. I think you got to see all those colours in Lucius; at least that's what I tried to put out there.


It's also a fascinating relationship between Lucius and Draco, with him poisoning his son.
Tom had to play change as well; it was great for both of us I think. I always felt that I was there, not necessarily as a foil to him, but so they could understand who he was. When I first came along I was the sort of monstrous and insensitive bully that would turn out the kind of bully that Draco had become. So you meet Draco being such a hideous git in the first film, and then you meet his dad and say, "I get it, I see why he's like that!". There's an unbroken chain of abusive parenting for who knows how long!

By the time you get to the last two films, you see Draco moving out from the shadows of his father because he can finally see what his father is. There are those seminal moments: when everybody's back is against the wall and things are truly dangerous, I would walk over him to get to the exit door. I would use him in order to restore my name, and it's not in his best interests. There is a moment in the final film, where, just very briefly, in my own mind I'm trying to choose between being a good father and being a loyal general. It might only be a frame in the film, but for me that was a massive moment for Lucius, and I think it's a big moment for Draco. Those people who had read the book know what I'm talking about, but for me he becomes extremely heroic.