Tom Felton opens up about his deep feelings for Harry Potter co-star Emma Watson
(Picture: ES Composite)Harry Potter star Tom Felton has admitted he had a “secret love" for co-star Emma Watson in his memoir, Beyond the Wand.
The 35-year-old, who made his name playing Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, said his love grew for Watson, who played Hermione Granger, after a difficult start.
“I loved and admired her as a person in a way I could never explain to anybody else," he said after denying for years that there was a spark between the pair.
After their first meeting at an audition when he was 11 and Watson was nine, he recalls the actress pointing to a boom microphone and asking him “what’s that?” to which he replied: “It means they are recording us, obviously."
He added: “My relationship with Emma did not start well. She’d have been forgiven for not wanting much to do with me. It got worse."
Once they bagged the roles, Felton said he would keep his distance from the star and spend his lunch breaks with other cast members smoking cigarettes and listening to rap music.
One day Watson put together “a little dance show in her dressing room that she wanted to present to us at lunchtime”.
Felton explained: “We were predictably dismissive. We sniggered our way down to Emma’s show and the sniggers grew louder as she danced.
“We were just being s***** boys, largely out of awkwardness and because we thought taking the p*** was cool.
“I did feel like a bit of a d**k, and rightly so. In the end, it was up to one of the hair and make-up ladies to tell me what was what."
However, he admitted: “I’ve always had a secret love for Emma, though not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear. That isn’t to say that there’s never been a spark between us. There most definitely has, only at different times."
He also spoke of the time he was first told that Emma had a crush on him – when they were 15 and 12.
“Rumours started to abound that there was more to our relationship than we were letting on. I denied that I liked her in that way, but the truth was different. My girlfriend at the time knew straight away that there was something unspoken between us. I remember using the familiar old line, ‘I love her like a sister.’ But there was more to it than that.
“I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma, but I loved and admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anybody else … we were kindred spirits.
“I know for certain I’ll always have Emma’s back and she’ll always have mine too."
