Jason Isaacs almost turned down playing Lucius Malfoy in ‘Harry Potter’.
The 54-year-old actor starred as the Death Eater in the hit movie franchise but originally auditioned for the role as Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart – which ended up going to Sir Kenneth Branagh – and was only persuaded by his family and friends.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Isaacs said: "I didn’t audition for Lucius, I auditioned for Gilderoy Lockhart. I was mightily p***ed off when they asked me, ‘Would I mind reading for a different part?’
"I was about to go play Captain Hook [in ‘Peter Pan’] and didn’t want to do two children’s villains. I went back in and read then went home.
"[My agent] said, ‘Just think about it over the weekend.’ I said, ‘No I don’t want to think about it. It’s fun and lovely and flattering but I am not playing two children’s villains.’ Over the weekend, everybody I knew called me: nieces, nephews, godchildren and then the parents. They all tried to persuade me to take the job, not because they cared about me but because they wanted to visit the set. So I took the job and thank God I did!"
Isaacs can currently be seen as the Soviet Union Red Army officer Georgy Zhukov, who was the Chief of General Staff and a member of the Politburo in Joseph Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union government in the 1940s and 1950s, in Armando Iannucci’s satirical comedy movie ‘Death of Stalin’.
Isaacs is also starring in the remake of the sci-fi TV franchise ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ and the series has received a lot of backlash due to the diversity of hiring a black female actor.
However, Isaacs admitted he loves the passion of the Twitter trolls from far-right hate groups and said it is "exciting" to be in the centre of it.
He told The Guardian: "I kind of love their passion. I love when they hate the show, or they say they hate the show and it’s always for some minute technical detail.
"It’s exciting to be at the centre of those kinds of scholarly rows."
Jason Isaacs nearly said no to Harry Potter role
