"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is J.K. Rowling's book of love and violence. For Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, that meant a movie filled with romantic dreaminess, unrequited love and the first tentative steps into loving relationships. But for Tom Felton, who plays nefarious student Draco Malfoy, the ongoing battle between Lord Voldemort and the Hogwarts crew meant a chance to establish his character as one of the classic villains in cinema.
When MTV News had a chance to chat with Felton at the red-carpet premiere for "Half-Blood Prince" in New York, he enumerated the characteristics of all great bad guys. "Cold eyes, I've been told," he said with a smile on his face. "A pretty pasty face. I think it's quite iconic, Draco, in the way he looks."
That'd be a platinum-blond mop on his head, ice-blue eyes staring ruthlessly at his nemesis Harry, and a seething energy barely contained within his slight frame. "I think to be evil you need an iconic look," he said. "Like a James Bond villain, with the scar or a cat. Something like that definitely helps."
Though his co-star Freddie Stroma, who makes his debut as Hogwarts student Cormac McLaggen during the film, doesn't play a villain, he does serve as a romantic adversary — and all-around arrogant jerk — in "Half-Blood Prince." "It's fun to do the comedy stuff and play that slimy, horrible guy and have [Emma Watson's Hermione] feed off it and her kind of just trying to ignore me all the time," he told us.
But McLaggen eventually receives his comeuppance, when Harry Potter himself convinces the rascal he just swallowed a "dragon's ball" during a dinner party, making him vomit all over a teacher. "I can't tell if it actually was [a dragon's ball], or it was Harry saying that just to make me feel bad," Stroma admitted. "I should probably do some more research on that — find out what I actually ate."
For his part, Felton would take a little bit of villainy over a love scene with his co-stars and longtime friends any day. "I was luckily left out of that," he laughed. "I heard it was a little bit awkward, so I was grateful not to be involved with the snogging."
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