Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros
Topics: Harry Potter, Film and TV, Celebrity
Liv Bridge
The actor who played Dudley Dursley is the latest of the Harry Potter alum to have emerged with an apparent glow up.
It's been a staggering 25 years since the beloved fantasy movie series hit theatres with the then very young Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, plus many other child actors, gracing our screens for the first time.
We also met 10-year-old Harry Melling, who played Dudley Dursley, our protagonist's rather chubby and cruel cousin, who is seen having a birthday tantrum over his 36 gifts.
From the 2001 original, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, we watched as the youngster also grew up in front of the camera alongside his co-stars, all the way through to the first part of the finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.
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Now, while the 36-year-old hasn't exactly fallen off the face of the Earth in the last 15 years, he's having a major comeback in a BDSM gay romantic film drama alongside Alexander Skarsgård, with fans reeling over his new look.
Gagged by the trailer, which teases sheer sexual tension between the characters played by Melling and Skarsgård, and a whole lot of biker leather to boot, dozens say they've been feeling hot under the collar – and shocked to connect the dots back to the now 'unrecognizable' Dursley.
"Dudley omg," penned one on social media. "Good for you."
Another wrote: "I saw the trailer for Pillion for the first time last night and imagine my shock when i learned that guy is Dudley from Harry Potter."
A third said they only recognised him as the chess player in The Queen's Gambit: "Now I'm impressed he's actually English and was in fact Dudley from Harry Potter."
While fans continue to lose it over the concept of Pillion as a dom-com movie, ahead of its release in February next year, they might be surprised to know young Melling did not even stay portly to play Dudley.
In reality, he had a drastic transformation right before our very eyes on the set of Harry Potter.
In 2009, he lost so much weight that there were even talks of recasting him in the latest instalment, though Melling instead donned a fat suit to reprise his role.
After shedding a whopping five stone (70lbs) between the fifth and seventh HP films, the London actor told The Telegraph at the time: "They did this double-take, 'Oh my God, we are going to have to do something,' and I felt very guilty.
"They could have recast, but instead they padded me out."
He added: "I can now shed the child actor thing, like the fat, and start a new career, because no one sees me as Dudley."
And start a new career he did – as, after dabbling in playwriting for his one-man show Peddling in 2014, he went on to land some pretty big roles and rub shoulders with Hollywood greats, such as Liam Neeson in The Ballard of Buster Scruggs in 2018.
Melling also appeared in two Netflix hits in 2020 – thriller, The Devil All The Time and as Kentucky-based chess player, Harry Beltik inThe Queen's Gambit.
He also starred as Edgar Allan Poe in The Pale Blue Eye in 2022, alongside Christian Bale, and with the likes of Denzel Washington in the 2021 movie based on the Shakespeare play, The Tragedy of Macbeth.
While Pillion started thrilling and charming cinemagoers in the UK on November 28, US viewers have to wait until February 6.