Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom, has explained how he thinks the movies' young cast avoided the "pitfalls of being a child actor"—and what he had to say was pretty heartwarming.
"One of the questions that was asked earlier about the pitfalls of being a child actor that we seem to have avoided, I would posit that a large degree of that was because we were all there together," Lewis said during an appearance at Rhode Island Comic Con on Nov. 3 (via People). "Frequently, you hear many stories of how they were the sole actor in that movie and having to carry that movie on their own and all of the pressures and anxieties that come with that. Whereas, we were all kind together."
He added, "a lot of the fears that we had were all shared" and said that nobody else can understand exactly "what we went through and how it affected our personal lives except each other."
Lewis played a Hogwarts student alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Tom Felton and many more young people.
Looking back now, 13 years on from the last Harry Potter movie premiere, the most important thing for Lewis are the friendships he made along the way.
"It's one of the things that I've carried with me is those friendships," he said. "I don't go back and read the books. One of the only things that I still kind of hold onto is those relationships that we forged throughout those films."
Childhood stardom has been under the microscope lately, with many former child stars speaking out about how their lives suffered as a result of finding fame at such a young age.
The latest example of this came courtesy of Demi Lovato, who recently released the documentary Child Star, on which celebs including Raven-Symoné, Drew Barrymore and Kenan Thompson tell their stories.
Off the back of this film, Lovato is advocating for "protections" for young people in the entertainment industry, so that future generations don't go through what she and the other stars of the film went through.
