meanie malfol just an act!!!!!

LOS ANGELES The bad boy of Hogwarts clearly is good at his job. In person, Tom Felton is as amiable as they come, yet he spent his youth playing a creep and bully as Draco Malfoy in the "Harry Potter" films.

Just weeks after the franchise finale, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," Felton will be back as another meanie, playing a cruel primate tender in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

As Harry's spiteful, scheming classmate at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Felton, 23, grew up as the kid "Potter" fans love to hate.

Felton, who has been acting professionally since age 9, originally auditioned for the "Potter" title role, a part that went to Daniel Radcliffe, and then for the role of Ron Weasley, which went to Rupert Grint.

David Yates, who directed the final four of the eight "Potter" films, said Felton came into his own with No. 6, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," as Draco begins to regret the malice bred into him by his treacherous parents.

"Seeing Malfoy get some depth in 'Half-Blood Prince,' that was Tom's film in a way," Yates said. "He got to play a really compelling character throughout, because he's got really awful parents, and they're so determined to make him into this little fascist. ... Tom just benefited from the opportunity to move out from those narrow confines of he's sort of a nasty kid, to where you say, 'OK, he's a nasty kid, but inside him, he's got something else going on.'"

Among future roles, Felton co-stars with Taraji P. Henson in the golf drama "From the Rough" and with "Twilight" actress Ashley Greene in the horror tale "The Apparition."

In "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," due out in August, Felton plays a malicious worker at a primate facility whose abuse of an unusually intelligent chimpanzee is one of the catalysts for a simian rebellion.

No matter how his career goes, Felton knows passionate "Potter" fans likely will not let him forget the nasty ways that Draco taunted Harry.

"There's been many, many a threatening letter...I don't want to burst their bubble and say, 'You're aware that we're friends in real life' and so forth," Felton said. "I just get a lot of distasteful looks from under 7-year-olds, and I've been booed and hissed at a few times, that I take as nothing but a compliment."