Cameron Diaz might be one of the few actors on the planet not to have bagged a role in any of the Harry Potter movies, but she still played an integral role off screen.
Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the film franchise, has revealed that the There’s Something About Mary star unknowingly helped Daniel Radcliffe when he filmed his scenes as Harry while flying on a broomstick.
The young actors would perform the many flying scenes, such as when their characters played Quidditch, in front of a green screen, with the background getting added in in post-production.
To help them focus on the action and CGI characters that would eventually surround them (like flying dragons), tennis balls on long poles were used for the actors to look at.
In Tom’s new memoir, Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, he explains how Cameron – who Daniel had a crush on – helped with the scenes.
“The broomstick was a metal pole fitted with a deeply uncomfortable bike saddle,” Tom wrote.
“There were stirrups for your feet and a harness to stop you falling. They strapped you to the pole, so you couldn’t fall, and they had a more elaborate see-saw device to move you up and down, left, and right. They blew fans in your face to make it look as if you had the wind in your hair.”
He continued: “When the first assistant director shouted ‘Dragon!’ or ‘Bludger!’ you had to look at the tennis ball like it was, well, a dragon or a bludger.
Because sometimes there were multiple tennis balls in scenes, each actor was asked to look at their own personalised tennis ball, Tom explained.
“We chose pictures of something or somebody close to our hearts,” he wrote. “Daniel Radcliffe had a picture of a particularly beautiful Cameron Diaz.”
Meanwhile, Tom, who is a fan of fishing, had an image of a “beautiful carp”.
We know which picture we’d rather stare at.