The forthcoming Harry Potter TV series is set to make stars of a whole new generation of young actors, as it did for some of the original films' child cast. You might have followed the rise to fame of the main Harry Potter film adaptations trio over the years, watching Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint go on to become household names. Watson managed to fit in a degree from Brown University before resuming her acting career with starring roles in Beauty and the Beast and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, although she is currently taking a break from screen work. Radcliffe's wide-ranging work since playing Harry has included The Woman in Black, Kill Your Darlings, and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and starring in Equus in the West End and Broadway. Meanwhile, Grint has starred on TV in The ABC Murders and Servant.
But what about their peers at Hogwarts and beyond? As Lavender Brown actor Jessie Cave admits she has started an OnlyFans account to clear her debts, we look at what became of some of the movies' other cast when filming wrapped. Jessie Cave, the Lavender Brown star, went on to appear in Pride, Black Mirror, Father Brown, and Am I Being Unreasonable? After her Hogwarts days, in March 2025 she revealed that her screen roles were not enough to pay the bills. The mum-of-four announced she was setting up an OnlyFans account, which appears to involve ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos for people with hair fetishes. On her Before We Break Up Again podcast, Cave explained: "I am launching an OnlyFans, it's not a sexual one...It’s a fetish. Fetish doesn’t necessarily mean sexual." She gave further details on her Only Me Substack, writing: "One year. I’ll try for one year. My aim? To get the house safe, cover the arsenic/lead wallpaper, build a new roof etc. My aim? To get out of debt. My aim? To empower myself? To prove to those in the past who have misjudged me that I’m not so sweet? To put time into something I never invested in before: self-love. "Were my years of Harry Potter conventions in fact research? [It feels] like I’m doing something naughty, something a little f***** up. I like that. Ripping up the good little actress rule book."
Tom Felton, best known for his role as Slytherin villain Draco Malfoy, has landed a number of acting roles since the films wrapped, including the US TV series The Flash and Origin. Felton has also dipped his toe into the music industry, sharing some of his own songs and guitar playing with fans. In 2021, Felton worried fans when he fell ill during a celebrity golf tournament in the US, but after being taken to hospital he said that he had just been suffering the effects of jet lag and exhaustion. Speaking to Collider in 2024, Felton revealed that the Harry Potter cast had never signed up to more than one film at a time, so they had no idea it would be such a long-running commitment: "We were never promised the fact that we were gonna all be coming back next year. I think we all assumed that they would replace us with half-decent actors at some point, but luckily they kept us on and we got better. So, yeah, I was lucky enough to have the best of both worlds. I was able to still stay at my muggle school while attending Hogwarts, and sort of go back and forth over months at a time."
Matthew Lewis, another of the franchise's long-running stars, was Lewis, who returned for each film as Neville Longbottom. Following his 10 years in Harry Potter, Lewis went on to land plenty of TV work including roles in The Syndicate, Happy Valley, Bluestone 42 and Ripper Street. He is set to star in a Channel 5 adaptation of Reverend Richard Coles' novel Murder Before Evensong. Lewis has also racked up further film credits in Me Before You opposite Emilia Clarke, and the Taika Waititi film Baby Done where he starred with Rose Matafeo. Echoing Felton's surprise that the Harry Potter franchise became so beloved, Lewis told People: "I always thought that people would tire of it. I thought that people would get fatigued with it. We signed up for two movies. I genuinely thought we'd do two movies, mostly because I'm a cynic. I just thought it was too good to be true...not until I got the contract for Deathly Hallows one and two did I really think that we'd go all the way. It means so much to people. I feel very protective of it in that way."
Twins James and Oliver Phelps starred as the Weasley twins, known for their practical jokes and later their heartbreaking final scenes. Speaking to Parade, the twins revealed there is a Weasley family WhatsApp group, and James added: "We say it's like friends from high school or college or something like that. You may not speak every day, but you stay in contact in your life." The brothers have continued to work together as a duo, including making a podcast which has featured some of their former Harry Potter co-stars. In 2024, they returned to Warner Bros Studios as the hosts of a Harry Potter-themed baking contest Wizards of Baking.
Bonnie Wright, who played Ginny Weasley, spent a little longer in front of the cameras after Harry Potter wrapped, but has since given up acting and moved into a different role in the industry. She earned a BA in filmmaking and has since moved to the US, working as a producer and director. Wright was briefly engaged to Harry Potter co-star Jamie Campbell Bower, who played a young Grindelwald, in 2011 but is now married to Andrew Lococo, with whom she has a son. In 2023, Wright told the Inside of You podcast that she had been worried about not portraying Ginny in a way that fans of the books would love, saying that she felt she didn't have enough screen time to do the character justice. She admitted it was "a little disappointing because there were parts of the character that just didn’t get to come through because there weren’t the scenes to do that. That made me feel a bit anxious or just frustrated, I guess."
Clemence Poesy might not have been one of the films' main cast, but Poesy had a memorable early career role as Fleur Delacour that proved a springboard to many TV and film roles. Poesy has had a busy schedule since her Harry Potter days, appearing in The Tunnel, The Walking Dead, The Essex Serpent and Tenet to name just a few of her roles. The actor is known for valuing her privacy and in 2017 told The Guardian of the level of fame that Harry Potter brought: "It’s nothing compared with other people involved in Potter… Dan [Radcliffe], Rupert [Grint] and Emma [Watson] probably have a much tougher time maintaining any kind of privacy – people are much less interested in my life than in theirs. But you learn a few lessons along the way, and you learn to completely close that door."
Robert Pattinson, who played Cedric Diggory, was limited to just 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but is arguably the biggest star to have come from the young cast and also holds the honour of being the first character death of the films. Speaking to GQ, Pattinson laughed about his lack of experience at the time and said he had not expected to keep acting: "I spent a lot of time living off the Harry Potter money...I really thought I was going to do music at that point. I don't know where I had the belief in that because there was absolutely no one saying there was a music career on the table...then I ran out of money, basically. It was definitely going in the wrong direction in terms of a career up until Twilight." After Harry Potter, Pattinson was catapulted to superstardom as Edward Cullen in an adaptation of the Twilight series and his relationship with co-star Kristen Stewart hit headlines, particularly when they broke up after she was pictured with her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders. Pattinson has since been engaged to FKA Twigs and in 2024 welcomed his first child with fiancée Suki Waterhouse. His most recent role was as the star of Bong Joon Ho's 2025 film Mickey 17 and he has also taken the title role in The Batman as well as starring in The Lighthouse, The Rover, Queen of the Desert, and Tenet alongside Poesy.
Harry Melling, who played Harry's horrid cousin Dudley Dursley, has said that he didn't stay in touch with most of the rest of the young cast. He told The Independent: "It’s that weird thing, we did it when we were so young. I think everyone’s sort of gone off and done their own things. A lot of them have left the UK, which is interesting. I’ve kind of stuck around here." Melling's later career certainly hasn't suffered from being confined to Privet Drive - his work includes having starred in Coen brothers film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, as well as the hit Netflix series The Queen's Gambit. Most recently, he played Thomas Wriothesley in the third instalment of the BBC's Wolf Hall adaptation, The Mirror and the Light.
Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang, had her first acting role in Harry Potter, and the experience clearly served her well as she has enjoyed a successful career on screen since then. Her most notable roles have included starring in Arcane and Nightsleeper, appearing in season two of The Wheel of Time, and is confirmed for the cast of the 2026 series of Bridgerton. But recently, Leung told Refinery29 that starring in Harry Potter had actually left her with a crisis of confidence about her acting career for years afterwards. She explained: "In my head, I was putting myself in a box, and I thought the only reason why anyone would want to work with me was for [being in Harry Potter]. And until I got that out of my head, I just felt a bit stuck. I think many people do when they play iconic roles where people keep bringing it up even though you've done loads of other things. I was really drawn to people actually, who would say to me, ‘Oh, I've watched this thing that you've been in,’ which is not Harry Potter. Suddenly I wanted to be their best friend.”
