Top 11 Best Cast Harry Potter Characters

By CJ Tiernan

I suppose it’s possible someone watched the Harry Potter movies without first reading the books. It’s unfathomable to me, but possible. For those of us that did read the books, we experienced a fantasy world for the ages, full of life and color and possibility. As a result, it set the stakes really high for the movies. Like, really high (James-Franco-at-the-Oscars level high). The characters in the books are so fleshed out and J.K. Rowling utilizes a very visual storytelling method that paints a vivid picture in our minds of these characters. Long story short: we had expectations. Boy oh boy did the movies deliver. Below is my list of the Top 11 Harry Potter Characters that were Best Cast to fit the descriptions in the book and/or the essence of the character. Enjoy!

1. Molly Weasley (Julie Walters) and Arthur Weasley (Mark Williams)

Molly and Arthur are fantastic characters in the book. They serve in a capacity as surrogate parents to Harry since (Spoiler Alert) his are dead and his back-up pair kinda sucks. It is through the Weasleys that we are introduced to the magical world outside of Hogwarts and get to view magic used in really mundane, everyday ways. Molly is tirelessly running a household full of redheads and Arthur is innocently curious like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, obsessed with “gadgets and gizmos a-plenty.” The two could not have been better cast.

2. Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith)

McGonagall has to be two things simultaneously to a young, impressionable Harry Potter. She has to be both supervisor and champion. You have to believe that she’s both willing and able to punish Harry Potter and also has his back. Maggie Smith harbors a twinkle in her eye that is so good in this capacity. She’s got both stick and carrot and completely willing to use both. The professor may be old experienced, but she’s got pep in the step and nothing sneaks by her (unless it’s under an invisibility cloak).

3. Vernon Dursley (Richard Griffiths)

What do you have to do to be Vernon Dursley? You have to hate magic and Harry Potter (the person, not the books) and anything that’s weird and out of place. You also have to love Dudley for some reason. Griffiths nails it in almost every conceivable way. He has maybe a tad too much whimsy to fit the strait-laced, by the book (ha, that works on two levels) attitude of Vernon but that’s almost exclusively due to the bushy mustache on his red face.

4. Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton)

Lega Nerd, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In the books, there are a lot of villains. Harry Potter is seemingly the chosen one, in the sense that everybody has chosen to bully/imprison/kill him. He’s like if Oprah saved the world and we all responded by treating her like Ellen DeGeneres or Kanye West. It’s hard out there. No bad guy is ever more terrifying than the one with a smile on their face. This one happens to have a smile slapped on a toad face, and be decorated in pink-and-cat everything. It’s like Midsommar: daytime horror. Her casting is flawless as I’m left only assuming that Staunton is a decent human being in real life. We never see that side in the movies.

5. Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch)

We had to wait all the way until the fifth book to meet this character and yet she made the top 5. That’s some pretty good casting. Loony Lovegood makes good on the loony bit by moving through life without matching the pace of the world around her. She is marching to the beat of her own drum so aggressively she seems fit to slip into a different dimension altogether at any moment. Plus, she has the world’s coolest specs.

6. Argus Filch (David Bradley)

If the word cantankerous was anthropomorphized, it would be nearly indistinguishable from Argus Filch. He is a member of the magic world, but bitter because he does not possess magical abilities himself. He’s the janitor of Hogwarts and goes through life dressed like Christopher Lloyd in Dennis the Menace. They say those who can’t do teach. Is that what’s going on here? Those who can’t do magic, clean up the magic castle? I don’t know. I might’ve considering something in the horticulture family myself.

7. Professor Snape (Alan Rickman)

Snape is a jerk. For like six straight books, he is a total bully to Harry Potter. He abuses his power to cut down and undermine Harry at every turn. He gets a redemption arc at the end of his journey that I don’t totally buy but, good for him. Mostly he’s a jerk, and that’s what Rickman plays him as. I never noticed any subtlety or subtext indicating his eventual about-face. That being said, if you’re looking for a bully dressed in black with greasy hair, Alan Rickman is your guy (hmm, that might not be the compliment I intended).

8. Professor Trelawney (Emma Thompson)

Professor Trelawney is like the adult Luna Lovegood. She is incapable of living in the real world. We have the benefit of learning that her skill set is several steps above that of your local tarot card reader, but she’s still largely a spacey prat. Emma Thompson, as she’s done so often throughout her career, disappears into the role. She is nearly unrecognizable with the magnifying glass spectacles and the hippie jewelry.

9. Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs)

I’ve read that Jason Isaacs had a profound impact on the aesthetic of his character. This is the character that probably departs most aggressively from his book description. That’s okay because it works. Lucius is an ominous presence on screen, holding his head aloft in understanding that he is better than the other, non-pure-bloods in his sphere. He opted for a dope cane that conceals his wand and serves as an homage to Slytherin. The end result is a look that screams: menacing wizard elite. That’s exactly what the Malfoys believe themselves to be so: nailed it!

10. Hermione Granger (Emma Watson)

She’s not a natural redhead and doesn’t have buckteeth, but Emma Watson is a good enough actress that she pulls off the role without them. In my opinion, she is the best of the child actors (apart from the late entrance of Evanna Lynch as Luna) in the series. In the books, Hermione (would love to hear all the ways you guys said that name in your head while you read the books before the movies came out to give you the pronunciation) is a bookish know-it-all. But, because the Sorting Hat only delivers bangers, she is also in Gryffindor because she is brave and selfless. That is a tough tightrope to navigate for a kid and Watson walked it with much aplomb.

11. Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall)

How does one go about casting a man to play a character who has spent years as a mouse? Does the actor need to have mouse-like features? Will they simply need to have rodent mannerisms? Do they need to be missing a finger? I’ve never been in that situation, so I can neither confirm nor deny the strategy, but I do believe they hit a home run. Spall, a dramatic British actor, delivers a horrible performance (which is to say, a wonderful performance as a horrible person). As a fun little note, if you find yourself disgusted by or angry at a character in a movie or TV show: ask yourself why. Is it pure plot, or is the actor partnering with the makeup and wardrobe department to generate something truly off-putting? We can’t all be Beyoncé but sometimes we didn’t wake up like this, we took hours to look this bad (I believe Billie Eilish could teach a Masterclass on the subject).

Final Thoughts

There are an unbelievable number of characters in the world of Harry Potter. The world is so rich and immense and the movies did such a beautiful job of capturing it with not only the actors, but the production design in translating that fantasy world into a reality. I’ve listed the characters that I felt they cast the best. I would love to hear from you in the comments on who your favorites were. Also, we’re about 6 months from the release of the TV series (I CAN’T WAIT!) so there will be more casting choices to pore over and dissect. Thanks! Have a great day!