Star trio facing life after Harry Potter

LONDON: The stars of the Harry Potter films each face the tricky task of forging a new career as the phenomenally successful series which has shaped their lives from an early age comes to an end.

Daniel Radcliffe has gone into musical comedy, Emma Watson into modelling and Rupert Grint into low-budget films, each seeking to make their name outside the eight films based on J. K. Rowling's novels about the boy wizard.

For 10 years, the British trio have grown up on screen, from pre-teenagers into young adults, in one of the most lucrative film series of all time.

But when the final curtain falls on Thursday in London with the world premiere of the eighth movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2", the magical world of wizardry and witchcraft they have inhabited for a decade will be history.

Grint said he was happy to say goodbye "in a way". "Though it's taken quite a while to get to that point," he said, admitting that when filming first ended "I had so much freedom at once, I didn't know what to do. I still don't."

Now, he said, he had mentally "closed the door" on his Potter career.

Grint has appeared in a handful of movies outside the Potter series, including "Comrade", a low-budget Norwegian anti-war film due out next year.

He said 10 years playing the same character was a long time and he "couldn't imagine" reprising the role.

Radcliffe, 21, is currently appearing in the lead role in the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" on Broadway.

The main Potter actors have all earned a fortune -- Radcliffe #42 million ($67.5 million, 46.5 million euros), Watson #22 million and Grint #20 million, according to The Sunday Times newspaper's rich list.

Watson, 21, who plays Hermione Granger, celebrated the end of filming by having her hair cut short and began modelling and fashion work.

She has already featured on several magazine covers and is to appear in two forthcoming films, "My Week with Marilyn Lucy" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower".

She spent 18 months at Brown University in Rhode Island but left in March. She is thought likely to resume her studies in Britain later this year.

David Barron, one of the film's producers, said Watson was a "star in waiting", while Radcliffe had "proved himself already", and Grint was a "very capable actor" who had far more than just "comedic genius".

David Yates, who directed the final four Potter films, said he thought the trio had the maturity to forge the right career paths. (AFP)