{"id":402644,"date":"2025-11-25T02:35:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/402644\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T02:35:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:35:13","slug":"shirley-henderson-was-37-years-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/402644\/","title":{"rendered":"Shirley Henderson Was 37 Years Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tShirley Henderson<\/a> will forever be linked to the \u201cHarry Potter<\/a>\u201d franchise thanks to her role as Moaning Myrtle in 2002\u2019s \u201cHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.\u201d It\u2019s a role she landed only after being advised by the movie\u2019s casting director not to mention her age to others. That\u2019s because Henderson was 37 years old, auditioning to play a 14-year-old schoolgirl.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe casting director said, \u2018Go for it \u2014 and don\u2019t mention your age,’\u201d Henderson recalled in an interview with\u00a0The Independent<\/a>. \u201cWhen I was first asked for an audition, I didn\u2019t know who Harry Potter was. But my sister, who was staying with me, had read the books. Still, I wasn\u2019t convinced I could play a 14-year-old girl because I was in my 30s at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Henderson, one of the film\u2019s casting directors thought she was the right actor for the job and never revealed her age to the rest of the crew during the audition process. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI went to the audition dressed as a schoolgirl \u2014 white shirt, black skirt, ponytail \u2014 thinking, \u2018This is ridiculous,’\u201d Henderson said. \u201cI did my wee bit for them and they thanked me. Months went by and I thought that was it, but then they phoned my agent, asked to see me again, and offered me the part\u2026 Myrtle is an old person in a young person\u2019s body and because she\u2019s ghosty, there\u2019s a kind of mistiness. You\u2019re not looking closely at my face, so we could get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHenderson added that she was able to maintain her privacy after the movie came out, unlike many of her fellow \u201cHarry Potter\u201d costars. She said, \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody recognized me at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHenderson was already an established actor by the time she landed the role of Moaning Myrtle, having starred in films like \u201cTrainspotting\u201d and \u201cTopsy-Turvy.\u201d She was nominated for the London Film Critics Circle Award for supporting actress of the year for the latter performance. Post-\u201cHarry Potter,\u201d Henderson went on to star in \u201cBridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,\u201d \u201cMarie Antionette,\u201d \u201cMeek\u2019s Cutoff\u201d and more.<\/p>\n

\n\tHead over to The Independent\u2019s website<\/a> to read Henderson\u2019s latest profile in its entirety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shirley Henderson will forever be linked to the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d franchise thanks to her role as Moaning Myrtle…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":402645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,36552,53,190420,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-402644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-harry-potter","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-shirley-henderson","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115608009233731309","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}