Emma, Rupert, Tom and Ralph reveal feelings on final 'Potter'

 Emma, Rupert

LONDON – Wearing a lovely glittering Valentino dress and Rupert Sanderson shoes, the pixie-faced Emma Watson was a vision of poise, confidence and glamour.  Now 21, the Paris-born actress who has portrayed Hermione Granger in all the “Harry Potter” film series and once again in its last installment in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” talked to us here in London at the Claridges Hotel.  Looking back, we asked Emma if she could share with us her feelings when she looks back at all the “Harry Potter” scenes that she has acted and share with us the one that is closest to her heart and the worst she had.  “The very first film will always be very close to my heart because, forgive me for using the word, but it was just magic to walk onto a film set for the very first time and just to see how a film is made and get to act was just a whirlwind,” she said. “It was just so exciting for me and I really enjoyed that first one. For me, Parts 1 and 2 are my favorites because we just got stretched so much and challenged. It’s the first time I felt like an actress and that was really nice. Probably on the second one when I was petrified, the last third of it was probably the least dear to my heart because I was absent for so much of it.”  Emma, who is already considered a fashion icon, is now also the face of Lancome and a Burberry model. We asked her to share her style statement. “It’s really hard to articulate what your own style is because it’s something that’s personal and you’re just drawn to things but I guess, my style is quite classic, quite clean,” she replied. “I also try and have a modern edge to whatever I do. But I am inspired by the past. I love Jean Seberg, Edie Sedgwick, Jane Birkin, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn so I kind of look backwards but then try to make it modern. I am also big on Valentino at the moment actually.”  For the last “Harry Potter” premiere that happened last week, 40,000 people showed up, some of them even camping overnight to get a good spot. There were also 90 television crews and they closed down the whole Trafalgar Square. “It’s intimidating to say the least but it’s hard to know how to be enough when people are that crazy about something and that passionate and love something that much,” Emma pointed out.  “It’s like how can I get around enough people and answer enough questions right. It’s intimidating but this is the last time I ever get to do this so I’m trying really hard to just enjoy it, just take it all in. It’s really all about the fans, not the media. The fact that they have come from all over the world and they have shared in this journey with me too. It’s so funny that they have grown up with me doing this so I am nervous and excited and yeah, everything really. My family, who came to the London premiere, is coming to New York with me as well and it’s really nice to have that support this time around,” she added.  Rupert Grint, who has brought Ron Weasley to life with equal parts humor and heart, talked to us about the most anticipated kiss in history with Emma. “It’s this moment that’s kind of been building up for probably about seven films now and yeah, there was a bit of pressure thing on both of us to make it believable because we both need to convince people we actually do want to kiss each other which in reality obviously we don’t really,” he revealed. “We didn’t really want to do it. I’ve known Emma since she was nine and we’ve watched each other grow up and just to kiss this person felt very strange and quite unnatural really. It took a lot of concentration to really sink into these parts to block out all those 10 years I’ve known her.”  We asked the 22-year-old redhead about the last scene in the movie where it shows Rupert and Emma as parents 19 years later and if he could imagine himself with kids and telling them about his “Harry Potter” experience. “It’s quite hard to sum up in a minute because it has been my childhood really,” he said. “It really sculpted the person I am today. When you come into quite an adult working environment at quite a young age, it does affect you quite a lot. It’s been half of my life but it’s been the best half of my life. I’ve loved every day of it and I’m really going to miss it genuinely.”  He added, “Having such a public kind of childhood has been quite an up and down kind of experience which you do kind of become quite suspicious of people around you. You’re not trusting everyone and that’s something I struggled with previously. Thanks to these films I have realized what I wanted to do in life. When I was 11, I wanted to be an ice cream man and suddenly I’m in this new world and it’s made me realize I want to act and keep doing this.”  Tom Felton, the 23-year-old London-born actor who has portrayed Draco Malfoy, revealed to us that he was aware of Emma’s crush on him at the beginning of the franchise. “We are the best of friends right now and I can’t really see the changes in us since we grew up together,” he admitted.  He revealed that working with award-winning actor Ralph Fiennes who portrayed the evil Voldemort was “pretty terrifying.” He disclosed, “He had this particular aura which was pretty terrifying to me. When he spoke, people listen. He had this presence that demanded attention. He really terrified me on the set.”  Tom, who won the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain last year, also added that he enjoyed working with Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. “She was really great as the psycho witch and I really had fun working with her,” he pointed out.  At the premiere, Tom brought his parents and his girlfriend, stunt coordinator Jade Olivia whom he has dated while filming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” in 2008.  The handsome and debonair Ralph Fiennes, dressed in a gray suit, admitted that when the role of Voldemort was offered to him, he was initially a bit unsure. “I was a bit unsure because I wasn’t familiar with the films or with the books and I knew it was a big cult but I wasn’t sure about it,” he said. “It took Mike Newell, who directed the first film that I did, and a wonderful casting director called Mary, to sit me down and talk to me persuasively to say that I should do this. I also have nieces and nephews who are big fans of the books so I think the combined influence of them and Mary and Mike Newell. I have to say I love the look. They showed me artwork of the design for his face and I thought it was extremely strong and quite frightening. I liked it.”  The British actor who gave us memorable performances in such movies as “Schindler’s List,” “The English Patient” and “The Constant Gardener” among others, disclosed that children do get scared of him. “Sometimes, there would be children visiting the set and sometimes they would be quite scared when they saw me,” he said and smiled. “In one case, one little boy I was just walking past the chair he was sitting in and he just burst into tears. I wasn’t even doing anything. I just walked past.”  We pointed out to him that it must be a tall order for any young actor like Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) to be in scenes with the great Ralph Fiennes. “Daniel is a great screen partner,” Ralph pointed out. “He has immense dedication and commitment, is always there. When you know another actor is there with you, it makes it much easier. You look for a collaborative spirit and that’s what he has and I really have enjoyed working with him.”  Formerly a Manila journalist, Los Angeles-based Janet Susan R. Nepales is a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Hallows goodbye: The end of Harry Potter

 Harry Potter

If you lived through the Age of Enlightenment, you probably didn't know it. Likewise, the Age of Reason. Or the Age of Innocence. But the Age of Harry? For Muggles not to know they've been living through the Potter Era would be like not noticing a Hogwarts' commencement exercise marching through their living room. Or the noseless Voldemort sitting in the breakfast nook.

 Harry Potter

When "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" opens Friday (actually midnight Thursday at many theaters), it will mark the end of something — though probably not entirely the enchanted Pottermania that has made the series the most popular in film history. And which has helped sell 450 million copies of the seven J.K. Rowling novels on which the movies are based. Certainly, when the second half of the last movie is finally released — in 3-D, which was still more or less a novelty when the inaugural "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was released in 2001 — it will free Daniel Radcliffe (age 21), Rupert Grint (22) and Emma Watson (21) from the characters that have defined their young lives (and made them, one hastens to add, financially independent). It will mean more free time for a big bunch of older British actors. And it will make finite, in a way, the Potter Generation: kids, many of whom are no longer kids, who read the books, saw the movies, were disappointed when they turned 11 and didn't get an invitation to Hogwarts Academy, and will see the conclusion of the films as a bittersweet punctuation point on the entirety of their childhoods.

 Harry Potter

It's been 15 years since the whole thing started (with the books), 10 since the movies began, and while David Yates hasn't been on it that long, he seemed ready to leave the wizards behind. When the last installment was "98 percent in the can," the director — the fourth to take on "Potter" (after Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell) — said he often met the same kind of question. "'With three directors before you, a book, other source material, what is it that you DO?' And I say, 'A lot, actually!' But it goes back to that notion that it doesn't belong to anybody. I can truly say this belongs to the audience; that's what it feels like to me."

Harry Potter star says he no longer drinks

Harry Potter star

Harry Potter star

LONDON — Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said he has given up drinking alcohol after realizing he was partying too hard.
The 21-year-old actor says he began to drink too much while filming “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,” the sixth movie in the Harry Potter series, in 2009.
He said, “I became so reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff. There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person’s lifestyle that really isn’t suited to me.”
He added that he decided to cut out drinking altogether, instead of simply cutting down.
“As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time — that doesn’t work for me. I do that very unsuccessfully,” he said.
“I’d just rather sit at home and read, or go out to dinner with someone, or talk to someone I love, or talk to somebody that makes me laugh.”
Radcliffe was speaking to GQ magazine in an interview released Monday.
Radcliffe shot to fame aged 11 after he was cast as Harry Potter for the movie adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s popular books about a teenage wizard.
Many child actors have struggled to cope with adulthood, but Radcliffe said he was determined to prove that child actors could go on to build long careers.
“If I can make a career for myself after Potter, and it goes well, and is varied and with longevity, then that puts to bed the ‘child actors argument,’ ” he said.
The last movie in the series “Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part II” premiered Thursday.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling

Pottermania has been abounding in the last couple of weeks with the run-up to the final film in the series, which premiered in London on Thursday. I watched some of the live coverage, and when Alan Rickman turned up, I couldn't help singing, "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape!" from the Potter Puppet Pals online video, "A Mysterious Ticking Noise," and the tune which has popped into my head as a sort of leitmotif for Snape whenever he turned up in the books. So I nearly fell off my chair when, a couple of seconds later, I could make out what the crowd were chanting.

So, I may or may not have been persuaded to go along to the midnight showing of the final film on Thursday night/Friday morning. I've never been one for midnight anything. I'm too fond of my sleep. Instead of visibly succumbing to the Pottermania with the book releases and queuing at the bookshops, I got up early to buy my copy. But this is my last chance. It remains to be seen whether I might dress up... Expect a Movie Monday review next week.

In a way, I envy the next generation of kids. With Pottermania so strong over the last few years, I doubt there are many people who haven't read the books, seen the films or at least had important parts of the story told to them. When the fuss has begun to die down, and a new readership comes along, I envy them the opportunity to read the books unspoiled, not knowing what to expect, like (most of) my experience. But just in case there are readers who don't yet know the whole story, be warned:

This review may contain spoilers for book 7; definitely contains spoilers for books 1-6.

After six books whose major events fit into a neat little routine - Something slightly odd happening in the school holidays, a return to school, slow revelation that something odder is taking place in or out of the school, several mysteries to solve throughout the year building to a climax just before the summer holidays - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows breaks the pattern by not sending Harry, Ron and Hermione back to Hogwarts at all. Instead, the trio set out on their own to search for and destroy He Who Must Not Be Named's horcruxes - a collection of objects to which the Dark Lord has attached portions of his soul in his search for immortality. Considering that Harry has only the vaguest idea of what these objects might be, and no clue where in the country - or the world! - You-Know-Who has hidden them or how to destroy them, this is no easy feat.

Sometimes, in fantasy quests, the world seems very small indeed, and the near-impossible achievable with unrealistic efforts. This is averted in most of Deathly Hallows, which portrays the tensions that rise when three people are living in close quarters, away from the rest of civilisation, embarking on a hopeless quest - especially when they have as a companion a little piece of the most evil wizard of all time, shut into a locket. in addition, because the trio are no longer at school, the plot no longer has to fit into a single academic year. It does, but it's equally possible that it could take years.

After a brief respite in Half-Blood Prince, the Ministry of Magic stands once more against Harry, this time because of its being infiltrated by You-Know-Who's Death Eaters who are terrifying the rest of the ministry into submission through threat and force. Thankfully, as Harry and co spend much of the book out of contact with other wizards, the sense of oppression is less intrusive, and though we do see the horrible Umbridge again, she plays a much smaller part.

Although Deathly Hallows is exactly the same length as its predecessor, it feels like many books in one, with more action, more varied scene changes as the heroes apparate across the country, visiting friends, London, forests in the middle of nowhere, wizarding settlements, more middle-of-nowhere, wizarding businesses, being captured and escaping and eventually winding up back at Hogwarts school after all. Add to this Harry's visions back in and out of Voldemort's mind, and I wonder how this much story can be packed into just over 600 pages. No wonder Warner Brothers chose to make this story into two films instead of just one.

As if this weren't enough, we find out a lot more about Albus Dumbledore's youth, where it is revealed that the wise old wizard was not so infallible as we'd previously been led to believe. Indeed, the man had spent his whole life trying to atone for a tragic mistake from his youth. And at last, the true character of one of children's literature's most complex anti-heroes is revealed: the enigmatic Severus Snape.

I stand in awe of J. K. Rowling's storytelling, for Harry Potter's story is made from so many strands of plot and subplot, but Rowling does not lose a single thread, weaving them together perfectly in this finally installment. Everything is significant, nothing is left dangling, Rowling is truly the master of her craft. The saga culminates in an epic battle at Hogwarts which is a bit of a family reunion, reintroducing forgotten faces and old favourites. But it is rather a bloodbath! We are forced to bid farewell to some beloved characters, for in war, no one is guaranteed immunity. There were two characters, just two, that I thought were safe (and neither of them were Harry.) I was proven wrong, and it is just one cruel, devastating loss.

If the Horcrux quest seemed a little too conveniently resolved, and if the wand-politics at the end are confusing, these are small criticisms when compared to the rest of the finale. The final showdowns - for there is more than one - are poignant, beautifully written and epic, and a couple of unexpected characters get moments which I fully expect to raise a cheer in the cinemas. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an utterly satisfying conclusion to this wonderful series that has captured the hearts and imaginations of children of all ages. While rereading the series, I have been fully absorbed both while reading it and when I was not, and it's strange to have finished it now. Roll on Thursday midnight!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling

After the stifling atmosphere of the last book, it comes as a relief to be reintroduced into the familiar, friendlier Hogwarts. Yes, the wizarding world has become a dark, dangerous place. Voldemort and his folllowers are at large and in the open, and every edition of the Daily Prophet newspaper reports more death and devastation. Even the Muggles know something strange is going on. But at least the threat is in the open. Harry and Dumbledore don't have to deal with the Ministry's opposition to their every move and wild accusations - on the contrary, the Ministry want to be best buddies. It would make them look good, because rumour has it that Harry Potter is the Chosen One destined to destroy Voldemort.

Before this book was published, it had been publicised, like the last two volumes, as being darker than ever. But, for the majority of the book, this is a return to a tone that was more reminiscent of the first half of the series. Harry, Ron and Hermione are now sixteen and a great deal of the plot focuses in on their muddled attempts at romance. There also seems to be a lot more humour, even among the dark events going on outside Hogwarts - and within, if Harry's suspicions about two of his oldest adversaries are correct.
Thankfully, Harry has grown out of the rage that was the defining point of his character in Order of the Phoenix! Professor Dumbledore plays a greater role, as he and Harry work together out of school hours, seeking the information and means to defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all. Through flashbacks, Harry learns a lot about Voldemort's backstory, from his parentage, to his childhood and adulthood, before his rise to power as the most feared wizard of all time. I found Half-Blood Prince an easier book to get through, not as emotionally taxing - and frustrating! - as its predecessor with the lack of Umbridge. There is a good balance between lessons, mystery, humour and exposition, with some significant development of some of the best-loved characters.

And then, right at the end, comes an abrupt change in tone, in the most disturbing scene of the entire series, the Cave Scene. The book comes to an end with a series of climactic events that mean that nothing can ever be the same again.

If somehow you have got through the book publication in 2005, and the film release in 2009, and still don't know what happens, be warned that plot and character spoilers follow:



While Harry has shown himself as growing in maturity throughout the book, with the increased responsibility allotted to him by Dumbledore, and in his own actions, the cave scene marks Harry's coming of age. Early in Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore tells Harry:

"I do not think you need worry about being attacked tonight."

"Why not, sir?" 

"You are with me."

When it was first revealed,
this cover bothered me. I knew
very well that Harry was not a good
 enough Potions student to continue
studying the subject in 6th year.
But then, I'd predicted Snape would
be made Defence Against the Dark
Arts teacher in book 7 - and that he'd
be really good! It hadn't occurred to
me that this might happen  earlier,
because of the rumoured curse -
Snape was too good a character to
lose before the end of the series. But
I hadn't foreseen the changes that
happen in this book.  Clearly I'm
not a candidate for Professor
 Trelawney's class.

At the time, it seems like a typical Dumbledore thing to say, a quirky but reassuring lack of false modesty - after all, Dumbledore is the greatest Wizard alive at this point. So it's a testament to how far Harry has come, when Dumbledore says, after a terrifying ordeal that reverses his and Harry's roles,

"I am not worried, Harry [...] I am with you."

But it is not Harry's characterisation that is so fascinating as Severus Snape's. We've known since the end of Goblet of Fire that he has been a Death Eater, and that he is assuming his former role, acting undercover for Dumbledore. And he is doing a very good job. To fool either Dumbledore or Lord Voldemort would be unthinkable - but Snape is fooling one of them. But which one? All the evidence in this book paints him in a very suspicious light indeed, making an Unbreakable Vow to commit some unnamed act for Voldemort, arguing with Dumbledore and trying to back out of a deal with him, and offering assistance to the very dodgy-acting Draco Malfoy. But Dumbledore trusted Snape, and I couldn't bear to think Dumbledore could be wrong. What sort of message was that to give the kids? Besides, Snape has always been the most complex person in the story, an ally but completely unpleasant! To make him a villain after all would surely diminish him as a character. But sneaky Ms Rowling gave plenty of evidence to support either argument - Snape as villain or Snape as hero - but no definite proof either way.

Until the end, when Snape proves his true colours beyond all doubt.

I read the last chapters in disbelief, desperate for some revelation to prove that somehow, something wasn't as it appeared. I read on, and I read on, and at last I came to the understanding that I must have been mistaken, that there could be no coming back from what he had done. But still it bothered me. Surely there must be more to this man than meets the eye?

Movie Monday: Never Let Me Go

I read the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro just before the film was released and all the publicity was coming out. As it happened, I was non-stop busy when the film hit the cinemas, and had to leave it a couple of weeks. That's OK, I thought, I can see it later - except it had left the cinema within about two weeks! After all the publicity, and the casting of Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan, I had expected it to be much more popular. But now the film's on DVD I've been able to rent it from Blockbuster to see how it translates to the screen.

Kathy (Mulligan), Ruth (Knightley) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) grew up at Hailsham school, a seemingly ordinary English boarding school, but one that when examined closely, seems a little odd. The children of Hailsham are being raised for a very specific purpose, which is revealed to them gradually, before they are too old to quite understand, until they are grown up knowing everything which is too deeply ingrained in them for them to expect any other life.

It's not very easy to compare the reading experience of Never Let Me Go with watching the film. There can only be one first time, and to watch the film knowing what is to come makes seemingly insignificant little scenes become heartbreaking. To me, it seemed that the Big Reveal was made more obvious in the film, but perhaps that was because I already knew it. It also seemed to come a lot earlier. The book seemed to dwell on the Hailsham years for a lot longer, but it might be that I was just reading it slowly.

The film certainly emphasised the not-quite-rightness of Hailsham in a more definite way than the book. When I read things that seemed a little out of place, I couldn't be sure if it was my interpretation of Ishiguro's choice of language that made things seem skewed, or if they really were. The book is narrated by Kathy H, which gives the reader a personal view of the story from within. Although Kathy narrates part of the film too, the visual medium distanced me and made me see the friends' situation as an outsider. The new  Hailsham Guardian, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), is a more relatable character, as she comes to Hailsham as an adult and is plunged into a situation that doesn't seem natural to her, whereas the children know no other life.

The Hailsham students, even as grown-ups, are visibly different from people of the outside world. Even after leaving school, they are isolated, living in shared accommodation with other people "like them." Their attempts to act like "outsiders" are amusing but pitiful - copying cheesy American sitcom characters because they know no other way to relate, and sitting stiffly in a cafe, too afraid and overwhelmed even to know how to order lunch. These are clearly outsiders, conditioned for plot reasons to be different from non-Hailsham people, and yet it's nurture, not nature, that makes them so.

The tone of the book is subdued, pensive and moody, and the film turns this right up with the help of the sad, eerie soundtrack, the characters' drab costumes and unexcitable acting. The literary cushion is stripped away and the film really drove home the passivity of the characters. Most books set in this sort of world show the fighters, those who rebel against their lot. But not everyone is a revolutionary, and Never Let Me Go's central trio are those ordinary people who have no thoughts that life could be any different. It's a bleak world, and what is thoughtfully melancholy in the book is shown up as plain depressing here.

I'm glad I got to see this film - finally! - but I think it works better as a companion to the book than viewed on its own. Alone, it is too harsh and leaves rather an unpleasant aftertaste. Kathy ends by pondering about how everybody dies (or "completes") wondering if life could have given them more, thinking they've missed something and been left unfinished, and that was the feeling I got from the film. I don't think anything too important was omitted, but the movie wasn't quite satisfying. I felt there ought to be more - but what?

It's Friday! Let's talk literary lovers.

It's a beautiful day here on the Isle of Wight, and I've spent the last two days in the garden with my nose in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, being lucky enough to have a four-day weekend this week. (Hurrah!)

Despite my crazy to-read list (which I swear has a life of its own and is possibly breeding without my help) I've been back in the bookshops again - quite aside from when I've been working! - and invested in four new YA books: Paranormalcy, Ballad, Amy and Roger's Epic Detour and What I Saw And How I Lied. I've made a start on Amy and Roger, but I'll give these books more attention when I've finished the Potter series.

At GReads, Ginger asked:

Mr and Mrs: Who are your favourite book couples?

Firstly, I have a confession to make: I'm not a big fan of the mushy stuff. (Shocking, I know!) For the most part, romance in books is a thing to be tolerated as long as it doesn't get in the way of the plot. So I don't tend to get excited about most couples. A lot of books are full of lovable, funny, lively or sweet characters who pair up and make each other happy. But for me, it takes more than that for me to think of them as "a couple" rather than "two characters who fall in love with each other." There has to be a special dynamic between the characters, people who complement each other. Their relationship is almost like a third character itself, where together they are stronger than each person apart. Which is not to say that either character is nothing without the other! If you've got two non-characters, then you get a non-relationship.

I think it's quite rare to find that kind of special relationship in modern teen fiction, probably because there is such a prevalence of love triangles. As I once tried to explain to a former Creepy Stalker trying to ask my advice on which of two girls he ought to ask out: if there's any question about it, if it's not obvious, then surely neither one is right to be with right now. That's my take on it, anyway.

So, who are those literary lovers whose relationship is so strong it softens even my hard heart? 

Exhibit A: Anne Shirley and Gilbert Bythe, from the Anne of Green Gables series. They meet when Anne is eleven years old, and Gilbert makes a very poor first impression when he makes fun of her red hair, causing her to smash her slate over his head. Anne doesn't speak to Gilbert for years after this insult. Yet he's always present in her mind, as an enemy and a rival in school, even though she might protest her indifference to him. They become friends eventually, however, and it's quite clear that Gilbert thinks Anne is something special. But to Anne, Gilbert is just a very dear friend - or so she thinks. But he will keep appearing in her thoughts and getting in the way when she's trying to daydream!

[Anne's "home o'dreams"] was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud and melancholy; buy oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity.

Bless her, she's in love and she doesn't even realise it! The great thing about the Anne series is that it doesn't just end with the happily-ever-after of a typical "romance," but shows them through their engagement living apart, married life and onto their own children, their love staying strong through good and bad times, and even when they might not necessarily be feeling "in love."

Exhibit B is drawn from the Bard himself: Benedick and Beatrice, the original love/hate relationship from Much Ado About Nothing. Both swear that they will never marry, show disdain for the opposite sex and put all their energy into trying to score points off the other - but they are so perfectly suited. No one else can match them in wit, and I have the impression that their surface antagonism hides a real enjoyment from their banter and wordplay with each other. It doesn't take a lot, really, for them to be persuaded into love with each other. To quote C. S. Lewis: "They were so used to quarreling and making it up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently." Here's their first scene together, as portrayed by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.



Runners-up:


Arthur and Molly Weasley - Harry Potter series. Ron's parents have been married for over twenty years and brought up seven children, and it is quite clear that Molly wears the trousers in the family. An angry Mrs Weasley is not a sight anyone likes to see up close, and Mr Weasley appears to be a typical hen-pecked husband, but the couple have a real love for each other which shines through, even when Mrs Weasley is shouting at her husband again for meddling with the muggle technology that he is so fond of. 


Sam and Sybil Vimes - Discworld novels. When we first meet Sam Vimes, Captain of the City Watch, he is an angry, cynical drunk who is going nowhere. Lady Sybil Ramkin - is a jolly-hockey-sticks type of noblewoman who dresses in her scruffiest clothes and looks after sick dragons. She is a sensible, motherly woman who is able to stand up for herself and her loved ones, maybe a toned-down version of Molly Weasley. It's clear that Sam and Sybil need each other. Vimes is too forceful a character to allow himself to be wrapped around his wife's finger, but she can firmly but gently persuade him to do things he doesn't want to, when no one else can. It is Sybil, and Vimes' love for her that saves him from the darkness inside himself.

Finally - a late addition to my favourite couples list - Faramir and Eowyn - Lord of the Rings. We don't get to see much of them together; in fact they don't even meet until near the end of the book. Eowyn is always described as a cold, strong, beautiful woman; she's full of love for her country, Rohan, as much courage and skill on the battlefield as her brother, but always she is forbidden from proving her worth because she is a woman. She is in love with warrior king Aragorn - or in love with the idea of him - and full of despair for the future. Then she meets Faramir, who does not view her with condescension, but respect and admiration for a remarkable woman. He offers her hope, and when she allows herself to fall in love with him, she is able to let down her guard without worrying about looking weak. Both know what it is to carry all of the burdens of their family and none of the glory - Faramir, though a respected soldier and wise, clever man, was always overshadowed by his elder brother Boromir. This is a marriage of equals, and the scene in which they realise their love for each other has always made me go a little bit swoony inside.