Hollywood actor Matthew Lewis has expressed frustration over the fact that he is still primarily recognised as Neville Longbottom, the character he played in the Harry Potter films.
“I still, to a degree, get a bit frustrated sometimes when people sort of say, ‘Oh, he is (Neville Longbottom).’ For example, I’m doing this show at the minute and a lot of the headlines are, ‘He’s no longer Neville Longbottom anymore.’ It’s like, ‘I haven’t been that for 10 years.’ I have done things that have been so wildly different,” Lewis said in an interview.
“Like, I’ve been in dramas that have won BAFTAs and done all of this kind of stuff. I’m not bragging — it’s just like I’ve done all this stuff and like 10 years later, it’s still like people are making the claim I’ve sort of jumped from Harry Potter into this and have completely ignored the journey it’s taken to get there,” the 31-year-old actor explained.
Lewis played Neville Longbottom in all eight movies of the Harry Potter franchise and regrets the fact that he will probably not be known for doing anything else.
“That can be frustrating — not that I’m frustrated with anything to do with Harry Potter — but it’s like you have that voice in your head that goes, ‘Hey you know all that work you did for the past 10 years, no one saw it. No one cares.’ They still think this is the first job you’ve done since Harry Potter,” Matthew said.