Actor Matthew Lewis, best known for playing teenage wizard Neville Longbottom, has explained that he was under contract not to fix his teeth while filming his part in the blockbuster film franchise Harry Potter. Matthew, now 24, was 11 when he first won the role and had to maintain his crooked smile for the duration of filming, in order to star completely in character.
Lewis told The Independent that he had to go for ten years without having anything done to fix his bad teeth and it hit his confidence hard. He explained that he had grown taller and thinner by the time they reached the third film and the producers decided that ‘they were uncomfortable with that, and thought, ‘No, we need to make him a bit geeky looking’, or geekier, I should say, so they put me in a fat suit and false teeth.’
As he got older, Matthew became so miserable with the costume that he asked the director of the last four films, David Yates, if he could get rid of the false teeth; he agreed but the young actor was still made to wear the fat suit. Lewis told the paper ‘Looking back on it, it doesn’t really bother me at all, but at the time, when you’re going through puberty and you’re on a film set with a lot attractive girls anyway, and then back at school as well, and you have to wear this fat suit, and have this long greasy hair – oh yeah, at the time, it was rubbish. It was really rubbish.’ He has since undergone orthodontic treatment to improve his teeth.