If today, Rupert Grint is a confirmed actor, it was not yet the case after the saga Harry Potter. Famous for portraying Ron in Magic LicenseHarry Potter, the actor asked himself questions after the end of the saga. He wondered if he was a good actor, if he was capable of playing something other than Ron, and above all, if he shouldn’t simply retire as an actor to do something else entirely.
Rupert Grint: Forever Ron?
Today 33 years oldRupert Grint began his acting career very early, when he was chosen to play Ron Weasley in Harry Potter at the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001. A role with which he has grown over the years until 2011 with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. And during those ten years playing wizards, Rupert Grint didn’t experience many other roles. We could see it in Driving lessons and in Little English Murdersbut nothing more.
So inevitably, when he stopped playing Ron, Rupert Grint wondered what he was going to do with his life. The actor had a big introspective crisis, wondering if he knew how to play something other than Ron and if he was made for this profession. So he decided to take a sabbatical year to reflect.
Rupert Grint as an ice cream seller?
In a recent interview with the New York TimesRupert Grint explained how 10 years playing Ron Weasley left him worried about “not succeeding in life as an adult actor“. So Rupert Grint took a step back from the world of cinema, took a year off, and bought an ice cream van. He briefly considered the idea of dropping the seventh art and become an ice cream seller. Here is an excerpt from the article New York Times :
When the Harry Potter films ended, Mr Grint feared he would not succeed as an adult actor. He knew how to play Ron, Harry’s brave and anxious sidekick. He didn’t know if he could play someone else. “I definitely thought, ‘Is it too late to choose something else?’ “, did he declare. He bought a pink and white ice cream van, which he drove back to his family home just north of London on his last day of filming. He briefly thought he might try his luck. But after taking a year off, he tried acting again. He had been sent a lot of “Potter”-adjacent material, more sidekicks, but he waited for bolder, more serious, more adult work. He had a role in a play by Jez Butterworth, enjoying the discipline of the theater, and starred in the crime comedy drama “Snatch”.
Luckily for his fans, Rupert Grint changed his mind and returned to film sets a year later. He briefly appeared in Charlie Countryman and became the hero of the film Moonwalkers. But it is on the small screen that the English comedian pulls out of the game by appearing in two successful series: Snap and Sick Note. And to think we could have had Ron Weasley ice cream instead.
