Jude Law reveals the Dumbledore line he wrote that made it into ‘Fantastic Beasts’
As it turns out, Jude Law brought a bit of his own magic to the Fantastic Beasts films.
The actor, who played the younger version of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, revealed in a recent Variety video that he personally conjured up one of the character’s lines that made it into the final cut of 2022’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
“The fact that everything didn’t go precisely to plan, was precisely the plan,” Law read from a card, before breaking out into a grin. “Ah! I’ve got a good story about this line. That’s Dumbledore. I wrote this line! I just thought that it was very Dumbledore.”
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Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. /Courtesy Everett
The 51-year-old explained that he had always felt a connection to Dumbledore after reading the Harry Potter novels with his children.
“He was absolutely the sort of heartbeat of those books. Or, rather, the spirit. Harry was the heartbeat,” Law said. “There was something in the heart of Dumbledore — there was something in the spirit of the man that I really liked. And, in fact, playing him put me in a very good place.”
He also shared some of the context that series author J.K. Rowling provided him about the character and how it shaped his performance.
“Jo Rowling always said to me that he saw himself as a monster because of the way he had behaved in the past and he was always trying to forgive himself, but I just always felt like he was a good, kind man,” he said. “And it’s nice playing good, kind men.”
Law’s Dumbledore played a pivotal role in the second and third Fantastic Beast films, tasking magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and his ragtag group of pals with putting a stop to the evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) before it was too late. He assigned them the mission because Dumbledore, who was in love with Grindelwald in their youth, had formed a blood pact with him that prevented either party from ever fighting one another.
Watch Law recall working on the films in the clip above.
