What The Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets Cast Looks Like Today

After the overwhelming success of the first "Harry Potter" movie — "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," which marked the first big-screen adaptation of the popular series of children's books — a sequel was quite literally inevitable, considering that four of the books were already on shelves. As a result, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" assembled the same cast from the first film — along with a few new additions — to tell the story of Harry Potter's (Daniel Radcliffe) second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, during which a monster from the titular "Chamber of Secrets" starts terrorizing students at the wizarding school.

Sadly, a handful of "Harry Potter" actors who appeared in "Chamber of Secrets" have since passed away. Richard Harris, who plays Albus Dumbledore in "Sorcerer's Stone" and "Chamber of Secrets," passed away during the franchise's initial run (he was replaced with Michael Gambon for the third film, "Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban," who plays Dumbledore for all of the remaining films). Alan Rickman, the man behind the villain-turned-hero Severus Snape, passed away in 2016 after all eight films were completed, and Robbie Coltrane, best known as the lovable Hogwarts groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid, died in 2022. Aside from these tragic losses, many of the cast members of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" are still working steadily years after the film's release ... so what do they look like today?

Daniel Radcliffe was just twelve years old when he took on the role of "Harry Potter" in the franchise's first movie, and by the time he returned for "Chamber of Secrets," he was officially an international celebrity. Alongside his co-stars Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, Radcliffe basically grew up on the "Harry Potter" set, but as he got older, he absolutely refused to be pigeonholed by the role. In fact, during his time on "Harry Potter," Radcliffe appeared in the daring play "Equus" — both in London's West End and on Broadway — in a lead role that required full nudity, proving at a still-young age that he was down to take serious creative risks.

These days, Radcliffe is, frankly, thriving. In 2024, after turns in several different Broadway shows — including "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" in 2011, where he proved he can dance and sing — the actor won his first Tony Award for his supporting role in the Stephen Sondheim revival "Merrily We Roll Along," and he's been prolific on the big and small screen as well. From the anthology series "Miracle Workers" — where he appears alongside Steve Buscemi across four seasons and plays everything from a priest to an inept angel — to oddball films like "Swiss Army Man" to romantic comedies like "What If," Radcliffe consistently makes impressively bold choices as an actor. Who else could go from playing Harry Potter to "Weird" Al Yankovic, which he did in the 2022 satirical "biopic" simply titled "Weird?"

In "Sorcerer's Stone," Harry is alone on the magical Hogwarts Express until a young red-headed boy asks to sit in his compartment ... and from that moment on, Harry and the boy, Ron Weasley, are the best of friends. Ron is funny, smarter than he often seems, and an invaluable friend to Harry — and the fact that he has a huge family which basically adopts the orphaned Harry doesn't hurt — and even at a young age, Rupert Grint brought a levity and humor to Ron that immediately established him as the perfect choice for the role. 

Grint, like Radcliffe, didn't wait for the "Harry Potter" movies to wrap up — which they did in 2011 — to pursue other work, appearing in projects like "Thunderpants," "Driving Lessons," and "Cherrybomb" during the franchise's original run. Though he temporarily "quit" acting to pursue his childhood dream of becoming an ice cream man (no, really, he bought an ice-cream truck and drove it around), Grint has done a fair amount of stage work, and in recent years, he's teamed up with director M. Night Shyamalan. For four seasons, Grint played the major supporting role of Julian Pierce on Shyamalan's AppleTV+ series "Servant," and he also starred in the director's apocalyptic film "Knock at the Cabin" in 2023 alongside Dave Bautista (and Radcliffe's then-future "Merrily We Roll Along" co-star Jonathan Groff). Grint also showed up in "Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities" in 2022, proving that he's just as versatile as his co-stars ... and hopefully that his days as an ice cream man are over and done with.

As the third member of the main trio, Emma Watson's brilliant Muggleborn student Hermione Granger completely irritates both Harry and Ron when they first meet her. After the three face down a troll in the dungeon during "Sorcerer's Stone," though, they become inseparable, and Hermione's considerable booksmarts and quick thinking get all of them out of a number of pretty scary scrapes. Whether she's teaching Harry to cast a perfect Summoning Charm in "Goblet of Fire" (the fourth book and movie) or putting together a difficult Polyjuice Potion in "Chamber of Secrets" that will allow the gang to impersonate Slytherins and solve the mystery of the school's monster, Hermione is always up for a mental challenge. 

Watson also worked on non-"Potter" projects during the franchise's run in the British TV movie "Ballet Shoes" and a voice role in "The Tales of Despereaux," and after playing Hermione, she played a supporting role in "My Week With Marilyn" and a leading one in another adaptation, 2012's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." In recent years — aside from huge roles like Belle in the live-action version of "Beauty and the Beast" and Meg March in Greta Gerwig's 2019 take on "Little Women" — Watson has become a major political and international activist. She has worked as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, traveling to countries like Bangladesh and Zambia in that role, and also helped launch the feminist movement HeForShe for the UN. One of Hermione's best characteristics is that she genuinely wants the wizarding world to be a better and fairer place for everyone, so it's safe to say that Watson's work as an activist and ambassador would make the fictional character very proud.

Aside from returning players, "Chamber of Secrets" brought some new faces into the "Harry Potter" franchise, including Kenneth Branagh as the school's new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Gilderoy Lockhart. (Unfortunately, "new" professors in that class all only last one year due to the fact that the position is cursed, so Branagh only appeared in one "Potter" movie.) As soon as he's introduced, it's clear that Lockhart is basically the worst; all of his books are about his over-the-top heroic exploits, and when it comes time to actually teach his class, he's absolutely terrible at the job. Later, Ron and Harry realize that Lockhart lied about all of those heroic exploits — he found people who actually accomplished them, got their stories, and then performed complex Memory Charms to make them forget about both their successes and his presence — and when he ends up on the worng end of one of his own Memory Charms, it's darkly satisfying.

Branagh is, of course, an extremely famous British actor who has appeared in everything from Shakespeare adaptations like "Much Ado About Nothing" to Tom Cruise's 2008 World War II drama "Valkyrie," but he's also an award-winning director. Over the years, he's directed Marvel movies ("Thor"), a modern take on a classic fairytale (2015's "Cinderella"), a series of Agatha Christie adaptations ("Murder on the Orient Express," "Death on the Nile," and "A Haunting in Venice," in which he also plays Poirot) and the 2021 autobiographical film "Belfast." That last one, which focuses on a young boy living through "The Troubles" in Northern Island in the late 1960s, ultimately won Branagh an Academy Award for the original screenplay.

As Harry's odious Muggle cousin Dudley Dursley — son of Harry's maternal, non-magical aunt Petuna (Fiona Shaw) and her awful husband Vernon (the late Richard Griffiths) — Harry Melling doesn't have an enormous role in "Chamber of Secrets," though he appears in the scenes where Dobby the House Elf (voiced by Toby Jones) appears at the Dursley household to stop Harry from returning to Hogwarts. Melling appears in several of the "Potter" films, but in their aftermath, he's managed to build up a seriously impressive resumé.

After losing so much weight before filming that he was very nearly recast for the first installment of the franchise's final story, "Deathly Hallows — Part 1" (he was able to wear a fat suit), Melling told The Telegraph he was happy to leave the role behind: "I can now shed the child actor thing, like the fat, and start a new career, because no one sees me as Dudley." He followed up his time as Dudley with the 2016 drama "The Lost City of Z," and in 2018, he worked with the Coen brothers for the first time thanks to a role in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs." (In 2021, he teamed up with Joel Coen on his own for "The Tragedy of Macbeth," led by Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; Melling plays the vital role of Malcolm, heir to the late king.) Melling has also played a villain, ("The Old Guard"), a strange preacher ("The Devil All the Time"), and an American literary icon ("The Pale Blue Eye," where he plays Edgar Allan Poe). You also probably remember Melling from "The Queen's Gambit," where he plays Harry Beltik, a state chess championship who becomes a friend and ally to chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy).

It's clear that Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) is a villain from the very moment he's introduced in "Sorcerer's Stone," and he gets even worse in "Chamber of Secrets." Harry's Slytherin nemesis is so awful, in fact, that Harry, Ron, and Hermione start to suspect that he might be the heir to the House's founder, Salazar Slytherin ... which would mean that he's responsible for opening the hidden Chamber of Secrets and unleashing a deadly basilisk that attacks Muggleborn students in the school. He's not, but Draco is still a little twerp who makes Harry's life difficult at every turn — and he's played perfectly by Felton, who snivels and snarls his way through his time as Draco in all of the "Harry Potter" movies.

Since "Harry Potter," Felton has stayed busy with movies like "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Belle" as well as the 2018 Shakespeare adaptation "Ophelia," where he appears alongside Daisy Ridley as the doomed title character. On the small screen, Felton played a recurring role in Season 3 of "The Flash" as Julian Albert, also known as Alchemy, as well as the lead role Logan Maine on the science fiction drama "Origin." In 2022, Felton released his memoir — titled "Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard" — with a sweet foreword from his friend and former co-star Emma Watson.

In "Chamber of Secrets," Harry finally meets Ron Weasley's extended family; though he meets Ron, his twin brothers Fred and George (real-life twins James and Oliver Phelps), and his snooty older brother Percy (Chris Rankin) in "Sorcerer's Stone," he's officially introduced to Ron's parents after Ron, Fred, and George free Harry from captivity at the Dursley home during summer vacation. When Harry meets the Weasley family patriarch Arthur (played by Mark Williams), he's arriving home from a late night of work at the Ministry of Magic and is pleased to hear that the flying Ford Anglia he enchanted was able to successfully fly from the Dursleys' in Little Whinging all the way to the Weasley home, The Burrow — though he pretends to admonish his sons for even attempting it — making it clear that Arthur loves enchanting Muggle objects.

Before "Harry Potter," Williams was likely best known for his role as the stuttering actor in 1998's "Shakespeare in Love," and since playing Arthur, Williams has shown up in movies like "Albert Nobbs" and TV shows like "Doctor Who" and "Midsomar Murders." Since 2013, Williams has played the lead in the British series "Father Brown," chronicling the adventures of a Catholic priest who also solves murders.

At first glance, Molly Weasley (Dame Julie Walters) seems like a strict mother who is constantly trying to keep her troublesome kids — especially pranksters Fred and George — in line, but when it comes to Harry, she's a total softie who just wants to make sure that Ron's orphaned friend is well-fed and well-loved. (In the fifth book, "Order of the Phoenix," she expressly says that Harry is a son to her.) Molly is also, as it happens, a deceptively powerful witch who uses her talents mostly as a homemaker, though she's a formidable fighter; when Harry first meets her, she treats him to a large breakfast as she scolds her sons for breaking into the Dursleys' home.

In 2014, three years after her time as Molly Weasley ended, Walters joined another franchise that adapted a beloved British's children's book with "Paddington," and she also plays housekeeper Mrs. Bird in the incredible 2017 sequel "Paddington 2." The actress has also appeared in "Mamma Mia!" and its sequel "Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again," "Mary Poppins Returns," and a 2020 adaptation of "The Secret Garden," and like her "Potter" co-star Dame Maggie Smith, she was named a Dame (in 2017).

The other major parent we meet in "Chamber of Secrets" is Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), the wealthy and connected father to Draco who looks down his nose at just about everybody. As it turns out, Lucius is up to no good throughout "Chamber of Secrets" — it's ultimately revealed that he plants a magical diary in Ginny Weasley's (Bonnie Wright) belongings, which would have framed her as the person opening the Chamber if Harry didn't figure out his plan. In the movie, Lucius actually tries to kill Harry after the young Gryffindor frees Lucius' beleaguered house elf Dobby by giving him a sock (this does not happen in the book), proving just how evil he really is.

Isaacs is yet another heavyweight in the British film industry, and he's stayed plenty busy since his final appearance in "Deathly Hallows — Part 2." On the big screen, Isaacs has shown up in recent hits like "Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris," and on the small screen, he's played major and supporting roles in projects like "The OA," "Awake," "Star Trek: Discovery," "Sex Education," "The Great," and "The Crowded Room." in 2023, he played acting legend Cary Grant in the miniseries "Archie," which chronicles Grant's life.