[NOTD] News Of The Day - 02/07/2007

Under the mistletoe: 'that kiss' with Daniel Radcliffe, which did not need 30 takes, says Leung. Picture: Complimentary

What Katie did next

HE HAS faced giant snakes, life-sucking Dementors, and Lord Voldemort. But teen love? Now there's a menace to challenge Harry Potter's mighty wand. Before Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter fans were angsting over who would land the pivotal role of Cho Chang, Harry's first love in the wizardly series. After an audition of Gone With The Wind proportions, Scottish-born Katie Leung nabbed the honour, and in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix she raises Harry's game a notch by finally giving the teen wizard the chance to wrap his lips around something other than butter beer.

There hasn't been such a fuss about a kiss since Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty. "It didn't help that everyone kept reminding me every five minutes that it was coming up," says Leung.

One of the worst kept secrets of the series is that love finally blooms for Harry and Cho under the mistletoe; an adolescent moment that even Leung admits is "not a particularly sexy or exciting kiss - it's very sweet and very clumsy, like all first kisses are. Especially since in reality, Daniel and I were a bit nervous and got a little giggly having to do it again and again".

Thirty takes is what we've been told. "Oh not as many as that," she says.

An interview with a Hogwarts pupil tends to be like the Potter stars themselves; polite, serene and a bit short. In the background hovers Leung's publicist, who seems far less at ease than Leung herself as she negotiates the diplomatic minefield that is kissing Harry Potter. "Daniel was a very good kisser - he pays me to say that," she says cheerfully, and the PR shifts and coughs a bit more behind her.

The experience of the two films - not just acting but touring the world to promote the movies - has boosted Leung's confidence, and facing the press and meeting fans has made her more outgoing. "If you'd met me before, I was unbelievably shy at school," she says. "You always get that one person who can go through a whole week without talking to anyone and that was me, sitting in the corner all by myself. It's pretty sad really. It got to the extent where I would be too scared to ask for help if I was stuck in class. I was that kind of girl. But doing this film has definitely brought out my confidence."

Later, she adds: "My favourite thing about playing Cho was being able to be popular. She's popular among the boys and the girls and, um, that's not something that happens in real life."

JK Rowling apparently insisted that, just as Harry, Ron and Hermione had been, Quidditch star Cho Chang should also be played by an unknown. The casting criteria were that the successful actress should be 16 and of Oriental appearance - two qualifications Katie happened to fit at the time. "Is there anyone here from Scotland?" asked the casting director at the start of the audition, and only Leung raised her hand.

Winning the role over 3,000 other hopefuls was a surprise since Leung had never acted before, even at school. It was her father Peter Leung, a Motherwell-based businessman, who saw the ad on a Chinese TV channel and told his daughter they should go to London and have a shot.

"When he asked me to go down for audition, he wasn't really forcing me or anything, he was just suggesting," says Leung. "Although, when I got down to the last 100 people, he started to get kind of serious and he was like, 'Yeah, you've got to try your hardest.'"

Pottermania has been a double-edged sword for Leung. She enjoys the work, the travel and the dressing up for premieres, but shortly after landing the part, a mean-spirited campaign against her kicked off on the internet.

"This kind of stuff is inevitable because Dan has so many female fans - millions of them - so I'm not surprised some of them didn't like me," says Leung, who is now weighing up a career in art and design, or pursuing other acting prospects. Last year she moved to London and shares a flat with a friend, not far from her agent.

"I have applied to a university in London but the decision is really hard because I have opinions from so many different people."

Recently it was mooted that she could be cast as the lead in a live action version of Mulan, the Chinese cross-dressing warrior. "I've just read about that in the papers too. As did my neighbours," she says. "It's not true at all, although it would have been cool if it was."

Meanwhile, the Cho Chang chapter of her life ends with Order Of The Phoenix. "Cho's mentioned briefly in the books," she says, "but they try to cram so much into the films that I don't think there'll be room for her. Besides, Harry's all about Ginny now, isn't he?"

Women In Fiction: Hermione Granger, Harry Potter

JK Rowling's women are a strange bunch. Given that the most pivotal characters are, in the main, men, the women seem to be stern (Petunia Dursley, Minerva McGonagall), benignly mad (Sybill Trelawney, Luna Lovegood) or vile (Aunt Marge, Dolores Umbridge, Bellatrix Lestrange, Rita Skeeter, Narcissa Malfoy... I could go on). The more mundane are either unbearably giggly (Lavender Brown, Cho Chang) or suffocatingly mumsy (Molly Weasley). And this from a woman! Hang on, I knew I liked JK Rowling for a reason...

Among the handful of exceptions, however, is the one character who comes closest to being an autobiographical creation of the author: Hermione Granger. < =text/> < src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js" =text/>

Hermione's character fails to sound particularly appealing on paper. The class swot, whose greatest fear is academic failure, she's also been known to lecture the boys about their habitual rule-breaking, report strange occurences regardless of how unpopular this makes her and she may even have muttered the words "I told you so" from time to time.

However, she's also startlingly intelligent, instinctively brave and loyal and also the focus of much of the humour in Rowling's later installments. Her comments about women and relationship are undeniably sage; the advice she gives Harry about how he should have handled meeting up with her right after a date with Cho Chang is worryingly accurate. Although she is prone to getting emotional, and a book doesn't go by without her having an all-out row with Ron, this only serves to make her more realistic as the burgeoning relationship between Hermione and the youngest Weasley boy (who is in no way good enough for her) becomes more and more obvious to everyone but him.

The young Miss Granger does suffer for her intelligence, being labelled an "insufferable know-it-all" by her own teacher and even resorting to time travel to try and fit in all her lessons. But she doesn't give in to criticism and she's aware of her own shortcomings, deferring to Harry when someone is called upon to train the Hogwart's fifth years in Defence Against the Dark Arts. She knows he's more instinctively competent with a wand in this subject (having had rather more practice than most), so she sticks to what she does best, organising the lessons and keeping them a secret in her own crafty way. She's also the unfailing voice of human kindness, being laughed at and belittled by her own closest friends for attempting to fight for the rights of house-elves.

Better still, Ron's attraction to Hermione and Harry's liking and respect of her are not predicated on her good looks. While she scrubs up prettily for the Yule Ball, she's generally unconcerned about her big bushy locks and makes only a small concession to vanity by fixing her slightly protuberant front teeth (but, then, her parents are Muggle dentists). It's her academic brilliance and flashes of steel backbone (as well as her full-on bitchslapping of Draco Malfoy) that win her friends.

If children (and adults like me who believe in reading a good selection of everything, no matter who it's aimed at) are going to be obsessively reading a particular series, it's important to know that there's at least one female character worth emulating. Rowling once sadly commented that in the many letters begging her not to kill off Harry, Ron, Dumbledore or Hagrid, there were very few asking her to spare Hermione. I, for one, am effectively writing that letter here. Long may she live!

Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. Not noticeably brave, hardworking or evil, she's pretty sure she'd be in Ravenclaw.

RADCLIFFE 'YOUNGEST WAX IDOL'

HARRY POTTER actor DANIEL RADCLIFFE has become the youngest person to be immortalised in wax at London's famous Madame Tussauds museum.

The actor, who will turn 18 later this month, has been modelled by the museum to stand alongside Hollywood legends such as TOM CRUISE, BRAD PITT and JULIA ROBERTS.

Radcliffe's fifth outing as the boy wizard, THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, is set to make its London premiere tomorrow night following a highly frenzied reception already in Japan.

But the unveiling of Radcliffe's wax persona shows he has tried to distance himself from the character of Potter, as he is shown in a simple suit rather than in robes with a wand.

The move follows Radcliffe's recent performance in the stage play of Equus, where he bared all as a crazed stable boy.

Ben Lovett, of Madame Tussauds London, said: "With his 18th birthday around the corner and stage roles like Equus under his belt, Daniel has become a young British acting force to be reckoned with.

"It's been great for the studio's sculptors to recreate someone who we've all watched growing up on the big screen."