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Tom Felton has “always had a secret love” for Emma Watson.
The “Harry Potter” star, who memorably played the villainous Draco Malfoy writes in his memoir, “Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard” that the two of them “definitely nursed crushes on each.”
But nothing ever came to pass as the crushes happened “at different times.”
The English actor, 35, recalled being told by a hair stylist on set that Watson had a crush on him.
“She was 12, I was 15,” he writes. “I had a girlfriend, and in any case, I’d been programmed to dismiss any talk of that kind of stuff. I laughed it off. In fact, I don’t think I really believed [it].”
Felton writes movingly of how Watson’s experience growing up on the “Harry Potter” set is one of the reasons why he holds her in such high esteem.
For one thing, she was only 9 when she first started playing brainy Hermoine Granger.
“She’d never been on a film set before, and out of the lead child actors she was the only girl,” he notes. “She was surrounded by ‘boy humor’ — silly practical jokes and pre-pubescent laddishness … it can’t have been easy … She was in many ways treated like an adult from the day she was cast.”
“It’s a phenomenon that can, I think, be more difficult for girls, than for boys,” he explained. “They are unfairly sexualized in the media and beyond. They are judged on their appearance, and any hint of assertiveness raises an eyebrow that wouldn’t happen if it came from a guy.”
Felton writes of one encounter with Watson that still makes him cringe.
During the filming of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” word reached the “Slytherin” boys, Felton and Josh Herdman (who played Gregory Goyle), that Watson had put together a little dance show in her dressing room that she wanted to present to them at lunchtime.
Felton admits that he and Herdman “sniggered” during the performance, “and the sniggers grew louder as she danced. We were just being sh–ty boys … but Emma was visibly upset by our thoughtless reaction.”
Afterward, a hair and makeup person approached Felton and told him he should apologize for his cruel behavior. He did and Watson accepted the apology.
Felton recalls that during the filming of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” rumors began swirling that the two were an item.
“I denied that I like her in that way,” he writes, but the truth was different. His girlfriend at the time questioned Felton about his feelings for Watson.
“I remember using that familiar old line: ‘I love her like a sister,'” he writes. “But there was more to it than that. I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma, but I loved and admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anyone else.”
