'Harry Potter' shouldn't be children's first experience with suspense and plot turns.
The good thing about my part in 'Harry Potter' was that I was pretty well disguised. When I was walking down the street, there was no real recognition factor. Parents would sometimes call their children to come say hello to Mad-Eye, and the kids wouldn't know what they were looking at.
An orchestra can add some class, a historical vibe, but I believe you can get the same emotion from pottery wheels.
Mike and I were really interested in other epic 'Legends & Lore' properties, like 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings,' but we knew that we wanted to take a different approach to that type of genre. Our love for Japanese Anime, Hong Kong action & Kung Fu cinema, yoga, and Eastern philosophies led us to the initial inspiration for 'Avatar.'
We really liked the magic of 'Harry Potter' and 'The Lord of the Rings,' but we could never figure out where the powers came from.
My parents sent me from Venezuela to the Convent of Our Lady, a boarding school in Hastings, which was horrible - like Harry Potter without the magic. Sometimes we went into town, and if we were caught chewing gum in our uniform, members of the public would take down our names and report us to the school.
In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making.
I discovered that bone china was a British invention, which had been developed by a pottery sited next to a slaughterhouse - 'bone' china, of course, contains bones, though we are inclined to forget that.
On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it.
I'll tell you, being on set on 'Harry Potter' was nerve-wracking. It was surreal to be in a room with those three kids, all of whom know exactly what they're doing.
