“The people I really admired were the people who didn’t mystify acting too much,” said Radcliffe, “who were just able to come to set and do it. Imelda Staunton, David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Michael Gambon; they’re all people that can be very normal and chatting away and then can just turn it on…”
Radcliffe also said he was particularly impressed with Staunton’s abilities. “Particularly, Imelda was one of the people that I just always looked at and went, like, ‘you’re so good and it’s so effortless.’ Because she will just be chatting away to everyone and having a good, nice life and day, and then able to give an incredibly terrifying or intense performance.”
Staunton, of course, first appeared in the fifth film “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” as the sugary-but-sadistic Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Dolores Umbridge. Umbridge quickly distinguishes herself as a professor who loves to punish her students, indeed, but does so with a smile. To be able to turn this chilling persona on and off is quite the feat.
