5 Actors Who Auditioned For Harry Potter Before Daniel Radcliffe Got The Role

The most agonizing part of Hollywood is all the near-misses. For every actor who got their big break, there are dozens of actors who almost got it but didn't, often for some arbitrary reason beyond their control. It must be bad enough when this happens for any random movie, let alone one of the biggest movie series of all time. For those aspiring actors who missed out on playing Harry Potter, they had to watch Daniel Radcliffe enjoy what seemed like the time of his life for the next ten years. 

The good news is that, if you were good enough to almost get the role of Harry Potter, you were good enough to get other roles. This certainly was the case for at least five of the kids who auditioned for Harry. How do they feel about it, and where are they now? Here's a quick rundown.

It may seem hard to believe given how perfectly he embodied the smarmy, good-for-nothing Draco Malfoy, but Tom Felton originally auditioned for both Harry and Ron. The casting directors even had him dye his hair brown and then red to better achieve each character's look. Felton lost both roles, but there was still hope: He was the frontrunner to play Draco. They just had to dye his hair again and test him out alongside Radcliffe and Rupert Grint.

Felton seems pretty happy with the outcome. "I'm very grateful I am in the film at all, but even more grateful that I got the character of Draco," Felton said in a 2011 MTV interview, adding, "I think Rupert and Dan, there's no question in my mind, there's no one else in the world that A) could have played the character better, but B) could have handled the behind-the-scenes pressure those guys have dealt with over the last decade." 

He's since gone on to write a whole book about the experience, and has nothing but kind words to say about his fellow "Harry Potter" castmates. Speaking about Radcliffe in another 2011 interview, he said, "Daniel and I have commented to each other that we probably won't get another chance to work in another movie together but if we do, he'd be the bad guy and I'd be the good one."

Before Hoult was starring in movies like "Nosferatu," he was trying out for the roles of both Harry and Draco. "I think I got to the point where I auditioned with [Columbus]," he explained in a recent Hot Ones interview. "He didn't remember this, it wasn't even a memorable audition. I think I said, 'Hey, I auditioned for Harry Potter. Still waiting to hear back ... I think I'm kind of going to age out of it soon.'" Hoult continued:

"I remember doing a couple of auditions, and then meeting him and maybe having fake glasses for the audition. Not getting the role of Harry, and then maybe coming back and [them] being like, 'Will you audition for Malfoy?' I don't think I got that either, and then [I] just gradually auditioned for every role in Harry Potter until they were like, 'No.'"

Much like Felton, it helps that Hoult did pretty well for himself afterward. He got his breakthrough role in the 2002 comedy "About a Boy," then starred in the British hit show "Skins." Pretty soon he was playing Beast in the "X-Men" films, Nux in "Mad Max: Fury Road," and he starred as the worst date ever in 2022's "The Menu." And although it's clear he never needed the "Potter" franchise to become a star, with the news of the recent reboot, he's joked about auditioning for the role again. "I think I can probably play 11 still," he joked. 

Hoult also noted that Christopher Columbus, who directed the first two "Harry Potter" movies, was also a producer on "Nosferatu." He explained, "So I got to spend time with him ... it's so weird how you kind of end up running into people. And [Columbus] also made one of my all-time favorite movies, 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' so that was fun and exciting to spend time with him. I'm fan of his, too."

Liam Aiken is perhaps best known for his role as Klaus in the 2004 adaptation of "A Series of Unfortunate Events," where he played a downtrodden orphan boy with dark, messy hair. It's a role that seems awfully familiar to "Harry Potter" fans, especially since this movie was also adapting the first book in a multi-part kids' series. OK, it's not a perfect comparison — this movie combined three books into one, and it tragically never got a sequel — but it still made clear that Aiken probably could've nailed the Harry role. 

Unfortunately, he too missed out, allegedly because of his American origins. As New York Magazine reported at the time, "Director Chris Columbus was set on him. But Rowling decreed that only a full-blooded Brit could play Harry." 

The good news is that Aiken seemed to be good sport about the whole thing: "I think I had this feeling that it wouldn't work out," Aiken said on the topic. "But it was fine. I hadn't done much before, and I would have just been Harry Potter from then on." Instead, he enjoyed the freedom that comes with not being tied to any specific role. While Radcliffe was stuck playing Harry throughout the 2000s, Aiken got to star in "Road to Perdition" and multiple "Law & Order" episodes. He'd also go on to briefly appear in season 6 of "Mad Men," playing a sleazy teenager who gets beat up.

"I was up for Harry Potter way, way back, but I don't quite fit the bill, I think," Mosely remarked in a 2008 interview. But much like Aiken before him, Mosely was destined to star in yet another kid-friendly book series adaptation: "The Chronicles of Narnia." He starred as Peter, the oldest and chillest of the Pevensie siblings, first in "The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe" in 2005, again in "Prince Caspian" in 2008, and finally in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" in 2010.

"It would have been fun," he said about his missed "Potter" role, "but I was thinking the other day, if I could have chosen one part for myself, I would have chosen Peter every single time. It's a dream come true to play a part that's so heroic, and something that's successful that people like. It's such a privilege."

Since his "Narnia" days, he's gone on to star in the British TV drama "The Royals" in 2015, and popped up briefly as "Italian Man" in the 2020 film "Artemis Fowl." (This was another adaptation of a kids' book series, one that's often compared to "Harry Potter" due to its protagonist that's meant to grow up with the reader.) For the most part, Mosely hasn't been in any huge projects in recent years, but those Narnia movies of his (especially that first one) are still popular rewatches. 

Another actor who didn't quite make it as Harry was Jamie Campbell Bower, who recalled in a 2022 interview how he'd made a dirty joke during the audition that blew his chances. As he explained:

"I had just heard this joke about a fairy, like, the reason why the fairy sits on top of the Christmas tree. And it's a really, like, dirty joke, because it's about the Christmas tree up somebody's bottom. And I told this joke in the audition, and there was again, this sort of air of silence after I said it. And I was like, 'Well, f—ed that up."

Bower would get his shot at starring in the franchise, however. In "Deathly Hallows: Part 1," he starred briefly as young Grindelwald, a dark wizard from Dumbledore's younger days. Not only would he reprise this role in the "Fantastic Beasts" movie, but he'd go on to play the vampire Caius in the "Twilight" series, as well as Jace in "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones." He may have missed his shot at Harry, but his instincts to audition for the role weren't wrong; this guy was destined to star in young adult movie adaptations. 

Most recently you can find Bower playing the villain Henry Creel/Vecna in season 4 of "Stranger Things," and he's expected to return with the much-anticipated season 5. So in other words, Bower's had an impressive career so far, even if he never got to be The Boy Who Lived. And although he might be too old to play Harry now, he could always audition for the role of Harry's dad in the upcoming TV adaptation.