How Bonnie charmed Harry

photographs by Diana Gomez.

'It's the only love scene I've done, but Daniel and I have always been good friends...'

There is something a bit otherworldly about Bonnie Wright – which is only fitting given that the 18-year-old Londoner has been playing Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter films for half her life. What began as a tiny role in the first film, as Harry’s best mate Ron’s little sister, morphed in the latest instalment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, into something much larger, when Ginny became Harry’s love interest, the two sharing a kiss that has made Bonnie the envy of adolescent girls the world over.

She arrives for our interview in East London without any of the fanfare that accompanies most starlet entrances. Wearing a pinstriped, buttoned-up, men’s-style shirt tucked into distressed denim shorts, cinched with an Hermès belt and teamed with plucky black patent flats, she treads the line perfectly between Hogwarts geek and movie-star chic. Tiny and bird-like, with a sheet of thick auburn hair, pale, freckly skin and intelligent blue eyes, she is pretty and endearingly earnest.

‘The way it was done was very romantic,’ she says of that kiss. ‘Daniel [Radcliffe] and I have always been good friends, which I think worked in our favour. It’s the only love scene I’ve filmed, but I imagine if you had to do one with some random person that you had no relationship with, it would feel very strange.

'It makes the on-screen relationship make more sense – this idea that we’ve known each other, and in a sense grown up together, off-screen as well as on. Dan is so energetic and really good fun, and the way he works is extremely professional.’

She speaks with the wise, considered tone of someone far older than 18 – probably due, at least in part, to having spent so much of her time around grown-ups on the Harry Potter set in Hertfordshire.

‘My character initiates the kiss,’ she says, ‘which is great because it gives this power to girls and shows that it’s OK to be the one who makes the approach.’

Spellbound: Bonnie with Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

But in real life, Bonnie insists that – despite setting tongues wagging when she stepped out with Twilight star Jamie Campbell Bower at the Saatchi Gallery recently – she is single and making no such approaches, to Bower (with whom she’s ‘just friends’) or anyone else. She has previously joked that she’s ‘married’ to Harry Potter, and, given that J K Rowling wrote the later books after the first few had already been filmed, she’s no doubt flattered that the part of Ginny has evolved so nicely.

‘Well, it’s hard to know if what she’s seen on the screen has influenced the storyline,’ she says modestly, ‘but I’m thrilled that I’ve been given the chance to sink my teeth in and show what I can do. I felt, in the last one, as though I really got to create something worthwhile.’ And so did the critics, who lauded her breakout performance.

But as Bonnie’s presence in the series has grown, so too has the public interest in her. Coping with fame has been ‘strange’, she admits. ‘You can be on holiday abroad, in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, and someone will recognise you, and you just think, “How far has this spread?”’ Because fame came to her so young, she’s been a bit oblivious to it, she says. ‘Then, all of a sudden, it became a bit daunting. I’ll be out shopping, and all it takes is for one person to recognise me and it can get scary.

‘My character initiates the kiss. It’s the only love scene I’ve done, but Daniel and I have always been good friends, which I think worked in our favour’

Bonnie’s journey from London schoolgirl to blockbuster leading lady is the stuff of most girls’ fantasies. The daughter of Gary Wright and Sheila Teague – of Mayfair jewellers Wright & Teague – she was raised in hip Shoreditch, East London, amid artists and other creative types (‘I didn’t really know people with nine-to-five jobs,’ she recalls).

When it became known that the Harry Potter books were to be translated to the big screen, it was Bonnie’s older brother Lewis, now 21, who suggested that his little sis – who’d never previously thought about acting - had something of Hogwarts about her.

‘He’d read the first two books and said, “You really remind me of Ginny.” I was only nine at the time and didn’t know who any of the characters were, but I read the first one and was hooked. When my mum came home from work, I said, “Please, please can you get me an audition for Harry Potter?”’ So Sheila tracked down the PR for the publisher, who liked Bonnie’s look, and that was that.  

‘To begin with,’ she says, ‘we weren’t even acting – we were just being ourselves. Most of us hadn’t acted before; we were hired because we had the right image. We’ve grown up together and we are like a big family. Everyone is lovely, and I think we’re all very inquisitive. When we come back to set after a break in filming, it is like coming back to school.

How did it feel, I wonder, to come of age on the Harry Potter set? ‘People always ask us that, and the answer is always that none of us has

experienced anything different. We always had tutors on set, but when I wasn’t filming I attended an independent school [King Alfred’s in Hampstead, North London] where there were lots of children of people involved in the arts, so I didn’t stand out, which made the whole experience easier for me.

'And living at home has also helped me to feel “normal”. I haven’t ever felt I’ve had to divide my “actress” life from the rest of my life. Whenever I’ve been filming, I’ve known that I would come back to my own bed at the end of each day. I have lots of close friends from school, as well as the friends I’ve made through acting.’

Bonnie says that she and her 19-year-old co-star Emma Watson – who plays Hermione and who has been the more high-profile of the two actresses – get on well and even stay in touch in between filming. ‘There is no rivalry,’ she says. ‘Emma has always loved art and English, like me, and that’s what she’s gone to study [at Brown University in America]. We share a lot of interests – including fashion.’ 

‘It will be strange and sad when it’s over. But it’s time for us all to do something different’

And this brings us to the official reason for our interview. Bonnie recently agreed – for no fee – to be an ambassador for Made-By, a not-for-profit labelling initiative which aims to trace the origins of clothes to ensure that they are manufactured in a sustainable way and without exploitation. Brands that comply – or leave a clean trail – are given the Made-By seal. These include emerging names such as Mark Liu, Edun, Claudia Sträter and Rani Jones.

‘I think many people think of ethical fashion as a bit kooky-looking, but the great thing about Made-By is that it shows that it can be really on-trend and use gorgeous materials,’ says Bonnie, gesturing to the rack of stunning clothes that she will be wearing for our photo shoot, all of which bear the Made-By seal. ‘So many people are doing these quick-fix ethical ideas – like one T-shirt made from organic cotton,’ she adds dismissively, ‘but with Made-By you’ve got to commit to the process through and through, which is the only thing that’s going to break the cycle of cheap labour and unsustainable materials.

‘In my family we’ve always been into ethical stuff and recycling,’ she explains. ‘I think it’s very important for the awareness to begin at a young age, so that it sets in and becomes a habit. It’s been great to find something I can be a part of that joins my interests in fashion and sustainability, and I’m hoping that as a younger spokeswoman I can encourage my generation to embrace this idea.’

This project clearly appeals to Bonnie’s earnest nature. I get no sense of her just jumping on the green bandwagon, like so many celebrities, yet I can’t help but think how grown-up – and worthy – she sounds talking about it. She is polite, un-prickly, and looks me in the eye throughout our interview. I find her impossible not to like, but I can scarcely believe I am talking to someone 15 years younger than me and so much more sorted than I was at 18.

To lighten things up, I enquire if she would ever consider designing her own ‘Bonnie Wright for…’ label. This is clearly a subject on which she feels passionate, and she responds with uncharacteristic bristle. ‘I’m really not for famous people who
design a line for a company, when you know it’s not really them creating it but a team of designers, especially when there are so many talented people who’ve taken the time to go and study fashion,’ she says adamantly.

And how about fronting a campaign, as Emma Watson is doing for Burberry? ‘If I developed a relationship with a particular company or designer, then maybe,’ she says. Her favourite labels include Comme des Garçons, Yves Saint Laurent,
Miu Miu, Prada and Christopher Kane, as well as up-and-coming names such as Richard Nicoll (whom she supported at London Fashion Week).

With such a creative family background – her parents met at Central Saint Martins in London, her brother is a designer – Bonnie always imagined herself forging a career in fashion, art or design. But, having bagged three As and a B in her A-levels (in English literature, art, photography and design technology), she has just started a degree in film at London University of the Arts. 

‘The attention can be daunting. All it takes is for one person to recognise me and it gets a bit scary’

‘It was a hard choice, because I’m indecisive and find it hard to close doors on other options. I’ll always be interested in fashion, but I’ve definitely fallen in love with film. 

‘I’m not quite sure if I’ll end up behind or in front of the camera,’ she says, ‘but because the scale of Harry Potter is so massive – just hundreds and hundreds of cast and crew – I’d love to do something totally different next: maybe a small independent project where the whole team worked really closely together, something creative, not just churning out a film to put bums on seats.’

Amazingly, she manages to say this without sounding ungrateful, just matter-of-fact. She adds, ‘I’ve always admired actresses like Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman – especially for her work in Moulin Rouge and The Hours – but I’ve never really fixated on anyone and thought, “I want to do exactly what they’ve done.” I really just want to do my own thing.’

For now, though, Bonnie is firmly focused on shooting the final Harry Potter instalment, The Deathly Hallows, which will be released in two parts (in November 2010 and July 2011), and in which Ginny and Harry get married and have a family. ‘When I read the book, I was shocked that my character had turned into something so big,’ she says.

Bonnie admits to feeling wistful as the end draws near (they wrap next June). ‘We’ve been so busy filming it that there hasn’t really been time to think about the fact that this is the last one. It will be very strange when it’s over and very sad. I don’t think any of us thought about it until the recent press promotion, when people started saying,  “The end is near.” And we were, like, “It is?”  When we’re filming you forget about the millions of people waiting for it to come out. And then when you turn up at a premiere and see thousands of people, you go, “Whoa!”’

But I sense real excitement in Bonnie about leaving her alter ego Ginny Weasley behind and moving on. It’s only too easy to imagine her as a leading light in arty independent films.

‘I know what Ginny would do in every situation, and relate to her because we’ve both got older brothers,’ she says. ‘But I think all of us who’ve been there from the beginning have got to the point where we want to do something different, be someone different.

‘People always ask, “Is this going to be the biggest thing in your career?” And while I don’t think there’s ever been anything like Harry Potter, that’s gone on for so long and maintained its popularity, I think the answer – for me and for all of us – is that more challenging experiences lie ahead.’