Matthew Lewis and his older brother cried their eyes out watching ‘Me Before You’.
The 26-year-old actor stars in the movie adaptation of Jojo Moyes’ novel, which tells the story of paralysed banker Will (Sam Claflin) who strikes up an unlikely bond with his new carer Louisa ‘Lou’ Clark (Emilia Clarke), and admitted he thought the movie was the ultimate tearjerker from the moment he read the script.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz at the UK premiere of the film, he said: "The book made me cry then I read the script and the script made me cry again even though I knew what was happening. As far as I was concerned, JoJo has helped write the screenplay and it’s been her baby, you know, and so she’s made it as close to the book as it really could have been. And yeah, they both made me cry! Actually I went to the screening, I saw it a while ago and I took my brother and my brother’s a few years older than me, this big, sort of gruff northerner and he cried his eyes out."
The actor – whose other credits include the ‘Harry Potter’ series in which he played Neville Longbottom – portrays Patrick and said it was a physically demanding role.
He added: "They gave me a trainer who I was actually with this morning called Tim Blakely. And he’s my bloody hero and he basically just flogged me for several months for this film… we wrapped on the day of June 2 last year and I was like ‘OK that’s the day I can drink alcohol again, that’s the day I can eat carbohydrates again, I can have pizza.’
"I wanted to make sure that Patrick was the Patrick that people imagined and the only way to do that would be the shape that Patrick would have been in. So.. I went and like kinda just did a lot of gym time, ate as lean as possibly I could, and I was going for check-ups at the doctors to see what my body fat ratio was and that kind of stuff. Yes it was interesting I mean when I finished I went and drank a lot of beer and ate pizza but for the three months I was on the shoot (…) and Sam was training as well so we were both in the gym together which was good. He worked a lot harder than I did!"
Lewis also stars alongside Jenna Coleman (Katrina Clark) and Joanna Lumley (Mary Rawlinson).
Matthew Lewis and his brother wept over Me Before You
