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To promote Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rupert Grint did an interview with the Daily Mail.  The actor mentioned how he auditioned for the role as Harry Potter’s best friend Ron Weasley:

‘It was completely on a whim. I’d sent in one application and had heard nothing back. So I figured there was nothing to lose by being a little inventive. My video was in three parts. There was a rap about myself; I dressed up as a woman and did a little sketch in the character of my drama teacher, then I read some Ron Weasley dialogue. I wasn’t thinking, “If I get this role, it will change my life.” Even after I’d got the part, it didn’t feel life-changing

However, the main difference is the choice of “toys” he is able to buy with the money he earned from the Harry Potter films.  One of them, well-known to his fans, is the ice cream truck:

‘As a kid my first ambition was to be an ice-cream man,’ he says. ‘As soon as I had enough money, I bought a 1974 Mr Whippy Bedford CF.

‘There was an advert in the local paper – an Italian man was selling an entire fleet of them and I couldn’t resist. It looked so beautiful: half pink, half cream with a blue roof, fibreglass body and wings at the back.

‘I remember the first time I took it out around my neighbourhood. I pulled in to the pub to do a U-turn and there were eight kids with their pocket money out, hoping to buy a choc-ice or whatever. But I had nothing to give them. I’ve learnt my lesson since then. These days I keep it well stocked. I probably spend more time driving around in that van than anything else, and if the acting suddenly comes to a halt, I can’t imagine a better job than being an ice-cream man. I love going on eBay and buying accessories for the van, things like light-up cones that I’ve stuck on the front. ’

So spending half his life on the film adaptations of the books about the boy wizard by J.K. Rowling, Rupert himself said it has been “like living in a strange bubble”.  Then, there was the death of Rob Knox, a supporting actor in Half-Blood Prince who was stabbed in a bar fight, to show Grint how lucky he really was:

…‘Everyone on the set liked him. He was a funny lad, a proper character. Going to his funeral… that was a sad day. Rob was the first young person I knew who’d died. The enormity of his death hasn’t really sunk in for me yet. But I’ve learnt something from it in terms of counting my blessings, realising how lucky I am and the importance of making the right decisions for the future.’

And one of those “future decisions” is how to approach kissing Emma Watson which was filmed last week for Deathly Hallows (the article mistakenly states Half-Blood Prince):

‘The hardest things for me are intimate scenes. Last week I filmed the long-awaited kissing scene with Emma Watson for Half-Blood Prince. Kissing her was always going to be strange. We’ve known each other for ten years so it was a bit like kissing my sister. We were both determined to get it right the first time, but our first try was a disaster because we both felt so self-conscious we couldn’t stop laughing. It took five takes in all…”

Although Grint has worked with the most prominent actors in the UK like Michael Gambon (Dumbledore), Alan Rickman (Snape) , Maggie Smith (McGonagall), and Imelda Staunton (Umbridge), he stated in the interview that he was not “easily impressed by famous people”.  That was until US First Lady Michelle Obama came to the Deathly Hallows set for a visit:

‘I didn’t think I was going to be nervous, then this huge motorcade pulled up at the studio and Michelle stepped out of a black Range Rover and everybody was speechless. It’s hard to imagine Gordon Brown having that kind of effect…’

Click here to read the complete interview and learn what was one of the best things that happened to him recently.  Hint: It was a gift from a fan for his ice cream truck.  But can you guess what it is?

The article included suave photos of  Rupert Grint as a James Bond character, as well as the familiar one of the trio in the Gryffindor room.  Click here to see the suave photos in the photo gallery.

Thanks to The Leaky Cauldron.

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