Posted: 11/15/2001

Potter Premieres!

by Paul Fischer

Exclusive: At the premiere of the new film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Los Angeles.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is an adaptation of the first of J.K. Rowling’s popular children’s novels about Harry Potter, a boy who learns on his eleventh birthday that he is the orphaned son of two powerful wizards and possesses unique magical powers of his own.

On a brisk Los Angeles evening, the year’s most eagerly awaited film enjoyed a star-studded premiere. Though only one of the stars from the film, 62-year old John Cleese, attended the event, there was no shortage of fans and stars of TV, film, and even sport, anxious to see what the all the fuss was about. Academy Award-winner Sally Field arrived solo declaring that Harry Potter “was going to be beautiful,” while 71-year old Doris Roberts, recent Emmy winner for Everybody Loves Raymond, said she, “was dying to see the film and brought my grandchildren out to prove it.”

As for Cleese, the 61-year old who plays Sir Nicholas De Mimsy-Porpington (aka Nearly Headless Nick), wittily pronounced, “that I’m not in the movie for very long so why on earth I get billing in front of Robbie Coltrane, I’ll never know. If you go to the bathroom for just a minute you’ll miss me completely,” the actor told me laughingly. He admits not understanding why the world is in love with Harry Potter, “but it’s an old fashioned fable, I think, and the movie looks so beautiful.”

Stars of TV’s West Wing, Smallville and er were amongst the guests who attended with kids and relatives in toe, and even Priscilla Presley turned up without talking to the waiting throng of reporters.

The fact is, the world is wild about Harry, and this glitzy Hollywood premiere was the icing on the cake.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone opens this Friday, November 16th.

Paul Fischer is originally from Australia. Now he is an interviewer and film critic living in Hollywood.

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