Evanna Lynch
Evanna Lynch (born 16 August 1991)[citation needed] is an Irish actress, known for playing Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter film series.[1]
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// [edit] Early life == Lynch is from Termonfeckin, County Louth, Ireland. She lives with her father Donal, mother Marguerite, elder sisters Máiréad and Emily, and younger brother Patrick.[2]
As of September 2008, she is in her fifth year at Our Lady's College, Greenhills, an all girls' Catholic school located in Drogheda, Ireland.[3] and is taking lessons in guitar. While filming however, she does not attend Greenhills but is tutored on set. During her primary school years, she attended Cartown National School.[4] She has been attending Centre for the Talented Youth of Ireland (CTYI) during several summers and completed a speculative fiction course.[5][6] She returned to CTYI for Session 2 in 2008, with her subject choice being Drama.
[edit] Career[]
It was revealed on 23 January 2006 that Lynch, who was then fourteen, had been cast as Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix after her father flew her to London for the open audition for the role,[7] beating nearly 15,000 girls in the auditions. She began the actual filming of Order of the Phoenix at the end of February at Leavesden Studios in England.
The open call was made because the producers felt that a conventional actress would not be suitable for the role of the eccentric Luna Lovegood. As producer David Heyman recounted in the ITV2 documentary, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Behind the Magic," "We had three girls who we thought would be good, but they were going to act Luna, they weren't going to be Luna."
Lynch had the chance to meet Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling at the Leavesden Studios during the early stages of the fifth film's production. After a long chat, Rowling had one thing to say about Lynch portraying Luna: "perfect."[8] However, as Lynch has naturally dark blonde hair, her hair had to be bleached light blonde for the role of Luna. On set Lynch became very good friends with fellow actresses Bonnie Wright (who plays Ginny Weasley), Katie Leung (Cho Chang) and Afshan Azad (Padma Patil).[9]
Since the release of the film, she has received many positive reviews, being called one of the true "standouts" of the film.[10]
When receiving her James Joyce Award in 2008, Rowling said that Evanna Lynch's voice was the only one she "heard" while composing subsequent novels.[11]
Lynch also voiced Luna Lovegood in the video game iterations of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
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Lynch is a Harry Potter fan and, according to her family, is obsessed with the series. As a younger child, she constantly wrote to J.K. Rowling, and in one such letter commented how much she would love to act in a Harry Potter film but doubted this would happen as she lived in "this sleepy little place called Termonfeckin, where nothing ever happened." To Lynch's surprise, Rowling replied, saying "Don't be too hard on Termonfeckin; it does have a brilliant name! And I come from a very sleepy place."[2]
In 2003, aged eleven, Lynch was disappointed that she would miss the release of the fifth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as she had been hospitalised. However, the hospital released her for the morning of the launch and a local bookstore arranged for her to receive a copy signed by author Rowling. Lynch showed up wearing a Harry Potter T-shirt, and blue nail polish that had "Harry Potter" written on every other nail and a Golden Snitch on the rest. She also had painted-on Harry Potter glasses and had written "I Love Harry Potter" down her arms. [12] Lynch's love for the novels even saw her choosing to name her cat Luna, who has had several kittens, one of them named Dumbledore. Another cat she had owned which died in early 2006 had been named Crookshanks, after character Hermione Granger's cat.[13]