GETTING THE PART (Continued)

....The dialogue was one line only. It read, “Not lost are you my dear?” I thought it was a strange piece of dialogue for Madame Pince. Then I saw the character heading. This was not Madame Pince but the Aged Witch from Knockturn Alley --- I looked once more at the letter, it said, ‘as there is no dialogue at the moment for Madame Pince, please be prepared to read for the Aged Witch.’ I was not prepared to read for the Aged Witch because I wanted the part of Madame Pince the librarian. I screwed up the page of dialogue and threw it in the bin in a fit of frustration - and later retrieved it of course once I’d calmed down and changed back from serious actress to pragmatic out-of-work-actress-who-wants-the-job.
When the time came for the second interview, I felt much better prepared and quite looked forward to the trip to Leavesden Studios.
Leavesden is a very strange place. You have to travel North of London and just when you begin to see green fields, you’re there. A large area appears, fenced by high wire. It looks very like some sort of prisoner of war camp. In the far distance you can just glimpse some low-level buildings. They look temporary and rather run-down. The nearer you get to the entrance, the more you realise that they are very run-down and that behind these rather shabby huts, there are enormous aircraft hangars. What I didn’t realise until later, was that these old hangars contain all of the wonderful Harry Potter sets – Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, The Whomping Willow, The Chamber of Secrets etc.
Inside Leavesden is a whole different world. About 1500 to 2000 people work there at any one time. Because Chris Columbus is American, they had a whole baseball league with stiff competition between the teams and plenty of space on site to play the games.
It was lunchtime when I arrived for the interview and it was clear that filming was on such a tight schedule that interviews for these smaller parts took place during breaks from being on the set. I was shown into a waiting room on the first floor of a building, which looked like a wrecked secondary modern school from the 1960’s. There were about 6 other women all waiting to be seen. I discreetly looked around at my fellow thespians. We were a mixed lot! Some were dainty and birdlike and very slim and others were, well, very odd- looking with age ranges up to 70plus! I seemed to fall somewhere between the two!
Names were called and people disappeared. We were kept waiting for a long time and so conversations between us all sprang up. It was clear that only one person had been asked to do a specific interview for Madame Pince. She was small and dainty and a ballet dancer by profession. She talked in a very confident way and I think all of us in the room felt that the part was already hers. This made me determined to make the best of my opportunity to impress. Finally my name was called. On the way to the interview room, I tried to discover from the casting director, whether the part had already been given to someone else and they were just going through the motions. She assured me that this was not the case. I was ushered into a very relaxed and easy room. I shook hands with various producers and sponsors and finally sat down on a blue sofa in front of Chris Columbus – a very laid-back, handsome young American who looks a lot like Tom Cruise.

......‘Hi Jenny’, he said, ‘We’re so sorry to keep you waiting’. ‘That’s quite alright’ I replied. ‘Well’, he looked at me for a few seconds and smiled.
‘Jenny, do y’have that dialogue we sent you for the witch?’ For a moment I couldn’t think what he was talking about. Finally I said, ‘Yes. Oh yes, I do’. Another pause. Chris smiled again. ‘Would you mind doing it for us?’ ‘What? Oh yes. Alright’. Thank goodness it had only been one line and that I had actually looked at it before throwing it in the bin! I found a cracked squeaky voice and gave the line, ‘Not lost are you, my dear?’ Another pause, Chris smiled again, ‘Gee Jenny, that was great. Where did you get that voice from?’ By now tension and nerves were giving way to frustration and I was getting cross. Anyone could produce a silly voice to deliver one line as an old witch. I smiled at him stiffly ‘Just part of my repertoire’, I said. ‘Well’, said Chris again, ‘I think that’s all we need Jenny. And thank you so much for coming in’....