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J. K. Rowling is a Actor, Scriptwriter, Producer and Songs British born on 31 july 1965 at Yate (United-kingdom)
Joanne "Jo" Rowling /ˈroʊlɪŋ/, OBE FRSL (born 31 July 1965), best known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, and sold more than 400 million copies. They have become the best-selling book series in history, and been the basis for a series of films which has become the highest-grossing film series in history. Rowling had overall approval on the scripts and maintained creative control by serving as a producer on the final instalment.
Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. The seven-year period that followed entailed the death of her mother, divorce from her first husband and poverty until Rowling finished the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). Rowling subsequently published 6 sequels—the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)—as well as 3 supplements to the series. Since, Rowling has parted with her agency and resumed writing for adult readership, releasing the tragicomedy The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction novel The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) which, according to Rowling, is the first of a series.
Rowling has led a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to multi-millionaire status within five years. She is the United Kingdom's best-selling author since records began, with sales in excess of £238m. The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £560 million ($798 million), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in the United Kingdom. Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007, and TIME magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors. She has become a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Lumos (formerly the Children's High Level Group).
Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War. Rowling had initially believed he had won the Légion d'honneur, as she said when she received it in 2009; however she discovered the truth on an episode of the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?.
Childhood and education
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind", gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn't particularly happy. I think it's a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English". Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. "Ron Weasley [Harry Potter's best friend] isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish." Of her musical tastes of the time, she said "My favourite group in the world is The Smiths. And when I was going through a punky phase, it was The Clash." Rowling studied A Levels in English, French and German, achieving two A's and a B and was Head Girl.
In 1982, Rowling took the entrance exams for Oxford University but was not accepted and read for a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter, which she says was a "bit of a shock" as she "was expecting to be amongst lots of similar people – thinking radical thoughts". Once she made friends with "some like-minded people" she says she began to enjoy herself. Of her time at Exeter, Martin Sorrell, then a professor of French at the university, recalled "a quietly competent student, with a denim jacket and dark hair, who, in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary". Although her own memory is of "doing no work whatsoever" and instead she "wore heavy eyeliner, listened to the Smiths, and read Dickens and Tolkien". After a year of study in Paris, Rowling graduated from Exeter in 1986 and moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. In 1988, Rowling wrote a short-essay about her time studying Classics entitled "What was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled", it was published by the University of Exeter's journal Pegasus.
Inspiration and mother's death
After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then boyfriend decided to move to Manchester. In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. She told The Boston Globe that "I really don't know where the idea came from. It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head."
Rowling described the conception of Harry Potter on her website:
I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn't have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write 'Philosopher's Stone' that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book.
When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately. In December of that year, Rowling's mother died, after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis. Rowling commented, "I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter."
Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing and that she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.
Marriage, divorce and single parenthood
An advert in The Guardian led Rowling to move to Porto in Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. She taught at night, and began writing in the day while listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. While there she met Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar, after sharing a mutual interest in Jane Austen. They married on 16 October 1992 and their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal. Rowling had previously suffered a miscarriage. They separated on 17 November 1993, 13 months and one day after their marriage. Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage, although the full extent is unknown. In an interview with The Daily Express, Arantes said on their final night together he had dragged her out of their home at five in the morning and slapped her hard. In December 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near Rowling's sister in Edinburgh, Scotland, with three chapters of Harry Potter in her suitcase.
Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as "the biggest failure I knew". Her marriage had failed, she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating:
Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
– J. K. Rowling, "The fringe benefits of failure", 2008.
During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide. It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book. Rowling signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless".
Rowling was left in "despair" after her estranged husband arrived in Scotland, seeking both her and her daughter. She obtained an order of restraint and Arantes returned to Portugal, with Rowling filing for divorce in August 1994. She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at the Moray House School of Education, at Edinburgh University, after completing her first novel while having survived on state benefits. She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café, and The Elephant House, (the former owned by her brother-in-law Roger Moore) wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep. In a 2001 BBC interview, Rowling denied the rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, remarking, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in midwinter. It had heating."
Instead, as she stated on the American TV programme A&E Biography, one of the reasons she wrote in cafés was because taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.
Harry Potter
In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evens, a reader who had been asked to review the book's first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London. The decision to publish Rowling's book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children's books. Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.
In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later, the Children's Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. In Rowling's own words, she "nearly died" when she heard the news. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher's Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time. Rowling moved from her flat with the money from the Scholastic sale, into 19 Hazelbank Terrace in Edinburgh. Her neighbours were initially unaware that she was the author of the Harry Potter series, although according to biographer Connie Ann Kirk, "most treated her with respect and gave her the distance they would want themselves".
Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998 and again Rowling won the Smarties Prize. In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.
The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000 and broke sales records in both countries. Some 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all literary sales records. Rowling admitted that she had had a moment of crisis while writing the novel; "Halfway through writing Four, I realised there was a serious fault with the plot ... I've had some of my blackest moments with this book ... One chapter I rewrote 13 times, though no-one who has read it can spot which one or know the pain it caused me." Rowling was named Author of the Year in the 2000 British Book Awards.
A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This gap led to press speculation that Rowling had developed writer's block, speculations she fervently denied. Rowling later admitted that writing the book was a chore. "I think Phoenix could have been shorter", she told Lev Grossman, "I knew that, and I ran out of time and energy toward the end."
The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release. While writing, she told a fan online, "Book six has been planned for years, but before I started writing seriously I spend two months re-visiting the plan and making absolutely sure I knew what I was doing." She noted on her website that the opening chapter of book six, which features a conversation between the Minister of Magic and the British Prime Minister, had been intended as the first chapter first for Philosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Secrets then Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.
The title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book was revealed on 21 December 2006 to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In February 2007 it was reported that Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had finished the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on 21 July 2007 (0:01 BST) and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time. It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States. She wrote the last chapter of the book "in something like 1990", as part of her earliest work on the entire series. During a year period when Rowling was completing the last book, she allowed herself to be filmed for a documentary which aired in Britain on ITV on 30 December 2007. It was entitled J K Rowling... A Year in the Life and showed her returning to her old Edinburgh tenement flat where she lived, and completed the first Harry Potter book. Re-visiting the flat for the first time reduced her to tears, saying it was "really where I turned my life around completely".
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling gave credit to her mother for the success of the series saying that "the books are what they are because she died...because I loved her and she died".
Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated $15 billion, and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.
The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television, although it is reported that despite the huge uptake of the books, adolescent reading has continued to decline.
Harry Potter films
In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum. A film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002. Both films were directed by Chris Columbus. 4 June 2004 saw the release of the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by another new director, Mike Newell, and released on 18 November 2005. The film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007. David Yates directed, and Michael Goldenberg wrote the screenplay, having taken over the position from Steve Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on 15 July 2009. David Yates directed again, and Kloves returned to write the script. In March 2008, Warner Bros. announced that the final instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would be filmed in two segments, with part one being released in November 2010 and part two being released in July 2011. Yates would again return to direct both films.
Warner Bros took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts when drafting her contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has been generally adhered to, with the majority of the actors selected from Britain. In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.
The first four, sixth and seventh films were scripted by Steve Kloves; Rowling assisted him in the writing process, ensuring that his scripts did not contradict future books in the series. She has said that she told him more about the later books than anybody else (prior to their release), but not everything. She also told Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) certain secrets about their characters before they were revealed in the books. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked her if Harry died at any point in the series; Rowling answered him by saying, "You have a death scene", thereby not explicitly answering the question. Director Steven Spielberg was approached to helm the first film, but dropped out. The press has repeatedly claimed that Rowling played a role in his departure, but Rowling stated that she has no say in who directs the films and would not have vetoed Spielberg if she had. Rowling's first choice for the director had been Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, as she is a fan of his work, but Warner Bros. wanted a more family-friendly film and chose Columbus.
Rowling had gained some creative control on the films, reviewing all the scripts as well as acting as a producer on the final two-part instalment, Deathly Hallows.
On her website, Rowling revealed that she was considered to have a cameo in the first film as Lily Potter in the Mirror of Erised scene. Rowling turned down the role, stating that she was not cut out to be an actor and, "would have messed it up somehow". The role ultimately went to Geraldine Somerville.
Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards in honour of the Harry Potter film franchise.
In September 2013, Warner Bros. announced an "expanded creative partnership" with Rowling, based on a planned series of films about Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first film will be scripted by Rowling herself, and be set roughly 70 years before the events of the main series.
Success
In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books, the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world. Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire. In addition, the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List named Rowling the 144th richest person in Britain. In 2012, Forbes removed Rowling from their rich list, claiming that her over $160 million in charitable donations and the high tax rate in the UK meant she was no longer a billionaire. In February 2013 she was assessed as the 13th most powerful woman in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.
In 2001, Rowling purchased a 19th-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Rowling also owns a £4.5 million ($7 million) Georgian house in Kensington, West London, on a street with 24-hour security.
Remarriage and family
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaesthetist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home.
Rowling's and Murray's son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003. Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince she took a break from working on the novel to care for him in his early infancy. Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born on 23 January 2005. The family reside in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Casual Vacancy
In July 2011, Rowling parted company with her agent, Christopher Little, moving to a new agency founded by one of his staff, Neil Blair, commenting on the move Rowling said, "Neil and Christopher reached a point where it wasn't working, the two of them together, and I had to make a decision. It was very, very difficult." On 23 February 2012, Rowling's new agency, the Blair Partnership, announced on its website that Rowling was set to publish a new book targeted at adults. In a press release, Rowling noted the differences between her new project and the Potter series, saying, "Although I've enjoyed writing it just as much, my next novel will be very different from the Harry Potter series." On 12 April 2012, Little, Brown and Company announced that the book was entitled The Casual Vacancy and would be released on 27 September 2012. Rowling gave several interviews and made appearances to promote The Casual Vacancy, including at the London Southbank Centre, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, The Charlie Rose Show and the Lennoxlove Book Festival. In its first three weeks of release, The Casual Vacancy sold over 1 million copies worldwide.
On 3 December 2012, it was announced that The Casual Vacancy will become a BBC television drama series expected to air in 2014 on BBC One. The series will be produced by Rowling's agent, Neil Blair, through his independent production company and with Rick Senat serving as executive producer. Rowling is collaborating closely on the adaptation. The number and length of episodes will be decided once the adaptation process has begun.
The Cuckoo's Calling
Over the years, Rowling often spoke of writing a crime novel. In 2007, during the Edinburgh Book Festival, author Ian Rankin claimed that his wife spotted Rowling "scribbling away" at a detective novel in a cafe. Rankin later retracted the story, claiming it was a joke, but the rumour persisted, with a report in 2012 in The Guardian speculating that Rowling's next book would be a crime novel. In an interview with Stephen Fry in 2005, Rowling claimed that she would much prefer to write any subsequent books under a pseudonym, but she conceded to Jeremy Paxman in 2003 that if she did, the press would probably "find out in seconds". In a 2012 interview with The New Yorker, Rowling stated she was working on her next adult novel, and that, though she had written only "a couple of chapters", the story "is pretty well plotted".
In April 2013, Little Brown published The Cuckoo's Calling, the purported début novel of author Robert Galbraith, who the publisher described as "a former plainclothes Royal Military Police investigator who had left in 2003 to work in the civilian security industry". The novel, a detective story about the suicide of a supermodel, sold 1500 copies in hardback (although the matter was not resolved as of 21 July 2013, later reports stated that this number is actually the number of copies that were printed for the first run, while the actual sales total was closer to 500), and received acclaim from other crime writers and critics—a Publisher's Weekly review called the book a "stellar debut", while the Library Journal's mystery section pronounced the novel "the debut of the month".
India Knight, a novelist and columnist for the Sunday Times, tweeted on 9 July 2013 that she had been reading The Cuckoo's Calling and thought it was good for a debut novel. In response, a tweeter with the name Jude Callegari said that the author was "Rowling". Knight responded "EH?", but got no further reply. Knight notified Richard Brooks, arts editor of the Sunday Times, who began his own investigation. After discovering that Rowling and Galbraith had the same agent and editor, he sent the books for linguistic analysis which found similarities, and subsequently contacted Rowling's agent who confirmed it was Rowling's pseudonym. Within days of Rowling being revealed as the true author, sales of the book rose by 4000 percent, and Little Brown printed an additional 140,000 copies to meet the increase in demand. As of 18 June 2013, a signed copy of the first edition sold for US$4,453 (£2,950), while an unsold signed first-edition copy was being offered for $6,188 (£3,950).
Rowling said "It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name", and confirmed on her website that she "fully intends to keep writing the series" and will do so under the pseudonym. On "Robert Galbraith"'s website, Rowling explained that she took the name from one of her personal heroes, Robert Kennedy, and a childhood fantasy name she had invented for herself, Ella Galbraith.
Soon after the revelation, Brooks pondered whether Jude Callegari could have been Rowling herself as part of wider speculation that the entire affair had been a publicity stunt. Some also noted that many of the writers who had initially praised the book, such as Alex Bray or Val McDermid, were within Rowling's circle of acquaintances; however, both vociferously denied any knowledge of Rowling's authorship. Judith "Jude" Callegari was revealed to be the best-friend of the wife of Chris Gossage, a partner within Russells Solicitors, Rowling's legal representatives. Rowling released a statement saying, "To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I had assumed that I could expect total confidentiality from Russells, a reputable professional firm, and I feel very angry that my trust turned out to be misplaced"; Russells apologised "unreservedly" for the leak, confirming it was not part of a marketing stunt and revealed that "the disclosure was made in confidence to someone he [Gossage] trusted implicitly". Rowling has accepted a charitable donation from Russells, which includes reimbursement of her legal costs and a payment to the Soldiers' Charity.
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(2010)
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(2007)
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Source : Wikidata
J. K. Rowling
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Birth name Joanne Rowling
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 31 july 1965 (58 years) at Yate (United-kingdom)
Awards Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 31 july 1965 (58 years) at Yate (United-kingdom)
Awards Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
Born in Yate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International when she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series on a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. The seven-year period that followed entailed the death of her mother, divorce from her first husband and poverty until Rowling finished the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997). Rowling subsequently published 6 sequels—the last, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)—as well as 3 supplements to the series. Since, Rowling has parted with her agency and resumed writing for adult readership, releasing the tragicomedy The Casual Vacancy (2012) and—using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith—the crime fiction novel The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) which, according to Rowling, is the first of a series.
Rowling has led a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to multi-millionaire status within five years. She is the United Kingdom's best-selling author since records began, with sales in excess of £238m. The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £560 million ($798 million), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in the United Kingdom. Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007, and TIME magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans. In October 2010, Rowling was named the "Most Influential Woman in Britain" by leading magazine editors. She has become a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Lumos (formerly the Children's High Level Group).
Biography
Birth and familyRowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War. Rowling had initially believed he had won the Légion d'honneur, as she said when she received it in 2009; however she discovered the truth on an episode of the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?.
Childhood and education
Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind", gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.
Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn't particularly happy. I think it's a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English". Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. "Ron Weasley [Harry Potter's best friend] isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish." Of her musical tastes of the time, she said "My favourite group in the world is The Smiths. And when I was going through a punky phase, it was The Clash." Rowling studied A Levels in English, French and German, achieving two A's and a B and was Head Girl.
In 1982, Rowling took the entrance exams for Oxford University but was not accepted and read for a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter, which she says was a "bit of a shock" as she "was expecting to be amongst lots of similar people – thinking radical thoughts". Once she made friends with "some like-minded people" she says she began to enjoy herself. Of her time at Exeter, Martin Sorrell, then a professor of French at the university, recalled "a quietly competent student, with a denim jacket and dark hair, who, in academic terms, gave the appearance of doing what was necessary". Although her own memory is of "doing no work whatsoever" and instead she "wore heavy eyeliner, listened to the Smiths, and read Dickens and Tolkien". After a year of study in Paris, Rowling graduated from Exeter in 1986 and moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International. In 1988, Rowling wrote a short-essay about her time studying Classics entitled "What was the Name of that Nymph Again? or Greek and Roman Studies Recalled", it was published by the University of Exeter's journal Pegasus.
Inspiration and mother's death
After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then boyfriend decided to move to Manchester. In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind. She told The Boston Globe that "I really don't know where the idea came from. It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head."
Rowling described the conception of Harry Potter on her website:
I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn't have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write 'Philosopher's Stone' that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book.
When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately. In December of that year, Rowling's mother died, after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis. Rowling commented, "I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter."
Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing and that she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.
Marriage, divorce and single parenthood
An advert in The Guardian led Rowling to move to Porto in Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. She taught at night, and began writing in the day while listening to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. While there she met Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes in a bar, after sharing a mutual interest in Jane Austen. They married on 16 October 1992 and their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal. Rowling had previously suffered a miscarriage. They separated on 17 November 1993, 13 months and one day after their marriage. Biographers have suggested that Rowling suffered domestic abuse during her marriage, although the full extent is unknown. In an interview with The Daily Express, Arantes said on their final night together he had dragged her out of their home at five in the morning and slapped her hard. In December 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near Rowling's sister in Edinburgh, Scotland, with three chapters of Harry Potter in her suitcase.
Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as "the biggest failure I knew". Her marriage had failed, she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating:
Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
– J. K. Rowling, "The fringe benefits of failure", 2008.
During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide. It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book. Rowling signed up for welfare benefits, describing her economic status as being "poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless".
Rowling was left in "despair" after her estranged husband arrived in Scotland, seeking both her and her daughter. She obtained an order of restraint and Arantes returned to Portugal, with Rowling filing for divorce in August 1994. She began a teacher training course in August 1995 at the Moray House School of Education, at Edinburgh University, after completing her first novel while having survived on state benefits. She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café, and The Elephant House, (the former owned by her brother-in-law Roger Moore) wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep. In a 2001 BBC interview, Rowling denied the rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, remarking, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in midwinter. It had heating."
Instead, as she stated on the American TV programme A&E Biography, one of the reasons she wrote in cafés was because taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.
Harry Potter
In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter. Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evens, a reader who had been asked to review the book's first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript. A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London. The decision to publish Rowling's book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next. Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children's books. Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.
In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later, the Children's Book Award. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. In Rowling's own words, she "nearly died" when she heard the news. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher's Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time. Rowling moved from her flat with the money from the Scholastic sale, into 19 Hazelbank Terrace in Edinburgh. Her neighbours were initially unaware that she was the author of the Harry Potter series, although according to biographer Connie Ann Kirk, "most treated her with respect and gave her the distance they would want themselves".
Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998 and again Rowling won the Smarties Prize. In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running. She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.
The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the US on 8 July 2000 and broke sales records in both countries. Some 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year. In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all literary sales records. Rowling admitted that she had had a moment of crisis while writing the novel; "Halfway through writing Four, I realised there was a serious fault with the plot ... I've had some of my blackest moments with this book ... One chapter I rewrote 13 times, though no-one who has read it can spot which one or know the pain it caused me." Rowling was named Author of the Year in the 2000 British Book Awards.
A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This gap led to press speculation that Rowling had developed writer's block, speculations she fervently denied. Rowling later admitted that writing the book was a chore. "I think Phoenix could have been shorter", she told Lev Grossman, "I knew that, and I ran out of time and energy toward the end."
The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release. While writing, she told a fan online, "Book six has been planned for years, but before I started writing seriously I spend two months re-visiting the plan and making absolutely sure I knew what I was doing." She noted on her website that the opening chapter of book six, which features a conversation between the Minister of Magic and the British Prime Minister, had been intended as the first chapter first for Philosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Secrets then Prisoner of Azkaban. In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.
The title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book was revealed on 21 December 2006 to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In February 2007 it was reported that Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had finished the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on 21 July 2007 (0:01 BST) and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time. It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States. She wrote the last chapter of the book "in something like 1990", as part of her earliest work on the entire series. During a year period when Rowling was completing the last book, she allowed herself to be filmed for a documentary which aired in Britain on ITV on 30 December 2007. It was entitled J K Rowling... A Year in the Life and showed her returning to her old Edinburgh tenement flat where she lived, and completed the first Harry Potter book. Re-visiting the flat for the first time reduced her to tears, saying it was "really where I turned my life around completely".
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling gave credit to her mother for the success of the series saying that "the books are what they are because she died...because I loved her and she died".
Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated $15 billion, and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The series, totalling 4,195 pages, has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.
The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television, although it is reported that despite the huge uptake of the books, adolescent reading has continued to decline.
Harry Potter films
In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum. A film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002. Both films were directed by Chris Columbus. 4 June 2004 saw the release of the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by another new director, Mike Newell, and released on 18 November 2005. The film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007. David Yates directed, and Michael Goldenberg wrote the screenplay, having taken over the position from Steve Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on 15 July 2009. David Yates directed again, and Kloves returned to write the script. In March 2008, Warner Bros. announced that the final instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would be filmed in two segments, with part one being released in November 2010 and part two being released in July 2011. Yates would again return to direct both films.
Warner Bros took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts when drafting her contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has been generally adhered to, with the majority of the actors selected from Britain. In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.
The first four, sixth and seventh films were scripted by Steve Kloves; Rowling assisted him in the writing process, ensuring that his scripts did not contradict future books in the series. She has said that she told him more about the later books than anybody else (prior to their release), but not everything. She also told Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) certain secrets about their characters before they were revealed in the books. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked her if Harry died at any point in the series; Rowling answered him by saying, "You have a death scene", thereby not explicitly answering the question. Director Steven Spielberg was approached to helm the first film, but dropped out. The press has repeatedly claimed that Rowling played a role in his departure, but Rowling stated that she has no say in who directs the films and would not have vetoed Spielberg if she had. Rowling's first choice for the director had been Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, as she is a fan of his work, but Warner Bros. wanted a more family-friendly film and chose Columbus.
Rowling had gained some creative control on the films, reviewing all the scripts as well as acting as a producer on the final two-part instalment, Deathly Hallows.
On her website, Rowling revealed that she was considered to have a cameo in the first film as Lily Potter in the Mirror of Erised scene. Rowling turned down the role, stating that she was not cut out to be an actor and, "would have messed it up somehow". The role ultimately went to Geraldine Somerville.
Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards in honour of the Harry Potter film franchise.
In September 2013, Warner Bros. announced an "expanded creative partnership" with Rowling, based on a planned series of films about Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first film will be scripted by Rowling herself, and be set roughly 70 years before the events of the main series.
Success
In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books, the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world. Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire. In addition, the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List named Rowling the 144th richest person in Britain. In 2012, Forbes removed Rowling from their rich list, claiming that her over $160 million in charitable donations and the high tax rate in the UK meant she was no longer a billionaire. In February 2013 she was assessed as the 13th most powerful woman in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4.
In 2001, Rowling purchased a 19th-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Rowling also owns a £4.5 million ($7 million) Georgian house in Kensington, West London, on a street with 24-hour security.
Remarriage and family
On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaesthetist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home.
Rowling's and Murray's son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003. Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince she took a break from working on the novel to care for him in his early infancy. Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born on 23 January 2005. The family reside in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Casual Vacancy
In July 2011, Rowling parted company with her agent, Christopher Little, moving to a new agency founded by one of his staff, Neil Blair, commenting on the move Rowling said, "Neil and Christopher reached a point where it wasn't working, the two of them together, and I had to make a decision. It was very, very difficult." On 23 February 2012, Rowling's new agency, the Blair Partnership, announced on its website that Rowling was set to publish a new book targeted at adults. In a press release, Rowling noted the differences between her new project and the Potter series, saying, "Although I've enjoyed writing it just as much, my next novel will be very different from the Harry Potter series." On 12 April 2012, Little, Brown and Company announced that the book was entitled The Casual Vacancy and would be released on 27 September 2012. Rowling gave several interviews and made appearances to promote The Casual Vacancy, including at the London Southbank Centre, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, The Charlie Rose Show and the Lennoxlove Book Festival. In its first three weeks of release, The Casual Vacancy sold over 1 million copies worldwide.
On 3 December 2012, it was announced that The Casual Vacancy will become a BBC television drama series expected to air in 2014 on BBC One. The series will be produced by Rowling's agent, Neil Blair, through his independent production company and with Rick Senat serving as executive producer. Rowling is collaborating closely on the adaptation. The number and length of episodes will be decided once the adaptation process has begun.
The Cuckoo's Calling
Over the years, Rowling often spoke of writing a crime novel. In 2007, during the Edinburgh Book Festival, author Ian Rankin claimed that his wife spotted Rowling "scribbling away" at a detective novel in a cafe. Rankin later retracted the story, claiming it was a joke, but the rumour persisted, with a report in 2012 in The Guardian speculating that Rowling's next book would be a crime novel. In an interview with Stephen Fry in 2005, Rowling claimed that she would much prefer to write any subsequent books under a pseudonym, but she conceded to Jeremy Paxman in 2003 that if she did, the press would probably "find out in seconds". In a 2012 interview with The New Yorker, Rowling stated she was working on her next adult novel, and that, though she had written only "a couple of chapters", the story "is pretty well plotted".
In April 2013, Little Brown published The Cuckoo's Calling, the purported début novel of author Robert Galbraith, who the publisher described as "a former plainclothes Royal Military Police investigator who had left in 2003 to work in the civilian security industry". The novel, a detective story about the suicide of a supermodel, sold 1500 copies in hardback (although the matter was not resolved as of 21 July 2013, later reports stated that this number is actually the number of copies that were printed for the first run, while the actual sales total was closer to 500), and received acclaim from other crime writers and critics—a Publisher's Weekly review called the book a "stellar debut", while the Library Journal's mystery section pronounced the novel "the debut of the month".
India Knight, a novelist and columnist for the Sunday Times, tweeted on 9 July 2013 that she had been reading The Cuckoo's Calling and thought it was good for a debut novel. In response, a tweeter with the name Jude Callegari said that the author was "Rowling". Knight responded "EH?", but got no further reply. Knight notified Richard Brooks, arts editor of the Sunday Times, who began his own investigation. After discovering that Rowling and Galbraith had the same agent and editor, he sent the books for linguistic analysis which found similarities, and subsequently contacted Rowling's agent who confirmed it was Rowling's pseudonym. Within days of Rowling being revealed as the true author, sales of the book rose by 4000 percent, and Little Brown printed an additional 140,000 copies to meet the increase in demand. As of 18 June 2013, a signed copy of the first edition sold for US$4,453 (£2,950), while an unsold signed first-edition copy was being offered for $6,188 (£3,950).
Rowling said "It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name", and confirmed on her website that she "fully intends to keep writing the series" and will do so under the pseudonym. On "Robert Galbraith"'s website, Rowling explained that she took the name from one of her personal heroes, Robert Kennedy, and a childhood fantasy name she had invented for herself, Ella Galbraith.
Soon after the revelation, Brooks pondered whether Jude Callegari could have been Rowling herself as part of wider speculation that the entire affair had been a publicity stunt. Some also noted that many of the writers who had initially praised the book, such as Alex Bray or Val McDermid, were within Rowling's circle of acquaintances; however, both vociferously denied any knowledge of Rowling's authorship. Judith "Jude" Callegari was revealed to be the best-friend of the wife of Chris Gossage, a partner within Russells Solicitors, Rowling's legal representatives. Rowling released a statement saying, "To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I had assumed that I could expect total confidentiality from Russells, a reputable professional firm, and I feel very angry that my trust turned out to be misplaced"; Russells apologised "unreservedly" for the leak, confirming it was not part of a marketing stunt and revealed that "the disclosure was made in confidence to someone he [Gossage] trusted implicitly". Rowling has accepted a charitable donation from Russells, which includes reimbursement of her legal costs and a payment to the Soldiers' Charity.
Best films
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Filmography of J. K. Rowling (14 films)
Actress
Add to a movie list
The Stranger's Hand (1954)
Directed by Mario Soldati
Genres Drama, Thriller
Actors Alida Valli, Trevor Howard, Richard Basehart, Eduardo Ciannelli, Richard O'Sullivan, Arnoldo Foà
Rating59%
Scriptwriter
Directed by David Yates
Origin USA
Genres Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Actors Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Callum Turner
Roles Original Series Creator
Rating62%
L'intrigue principale de cet épisode se déroule au Brésil (notamment à Rio de Janeiro), probablement dans les années 1930.
, 2h14Directed by David Yates
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Actors Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Katherine Waterston, Johnny Depp, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol
Roles Original Series Creator
Rating65%
En 1927, quelques mois seulement après son arrestation par le Congrès magique des États-Unis, Gellert Grindelwald s'évade et souhaite rassembler des sorciers de « sang-pur » afin de régner sur l’ensemble de la population non magique. Albus Dumbledore, un professeur renommé de l'école de sorcellerie britannique de Poudlard, et ancien ami d'enfance de Grindelwald, semble le seul en mesure de l'arrêter.
, 53minutesDirected by Gianmaria Pezzato
Origin Italie
Genres Drama, Fantasy, Adventure
Roles Writer
Rating54%
Les Origines de l'héritier décrit l'histoire de la montée au pouvoir de Tom Jedusor alias Voldemort. Outre le protagoniste héritier de Serpentard, des personnages originaux ont été introduits avec les héritiers des autres maisons de Poudlard.
, 2h13Directed by David Yates
Origin USA
Genres Science fiction, Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Themes Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Ghost films, Children's films
Actors Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller, Colin Farrell, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler
Roles Original Series Creator
Rating72%
1926. Norbert Dragonneau rentre à peine d'un périple à travers le monde où il a répertorié un bestiaire extraordinaire de créatures fantastiques. Il pense faire une courte halte à New York mais une série d'événements et de rencontres inattendues risquent de prolonger son séjour. C'est désormais le monde de la magie qui est menacé.
, 2h10Directed by David Yates
Genres Fantasy, Adventure
Themes Films about education, Films about children, Ghost films, Children's films
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman
Roles Novel
Rating80%
Lord Voldemort retrieves the Elder Wand from Albus Dumbledore's grave. After burying Dobby, Harry Potter asks the help of goblin Griphook, Ron, and Hermione to break into Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts bank, suspecting a Horcrux may be there. Griphook agrees, in exchange for the Sword of Gryffindor. Wandmaker Ollivander tells Harry that two wands taken from Malfoy Manor belonged to Bellatrix and to Draco Malfoy, but Malfoy's has changed its allegiance to Harry.
, 2h26Directed by David Yates
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Fantastic, Fantasy, Adventure
Themes Films about animals, Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Transport films, Films about snakes, Harry Potter, Films about dragons, Ghost films, Road movies, Children's films, Reptile
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Felton
Roles Novel
Rating77%
The Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour, addresses the wizarding media, stating that the Ministry would remain strong even as Lord Voldemort gains strength. Harry, Ron and Hermione prepare for a journey to find and destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, with Harry watching Dursleys depart and Hermione wiping her parent's memories of her.
, 5minutesOrigin USA
Genres Adventure
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Bonnie Wright, Michael Gambon, Robbie Coltrane
Rating81%
, 2h33Directed by David Yates
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Themes Films about animals, Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Wolves in film, Harry Potter, Ghost films, Werewolves in film, Children's films, Mise en scène d'un mammifère
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Jim Broadbent, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter
Roles Novel
Rating76%
Lord Voldemort is tightening his grip on both the wizarding and Muggle worlds and has chosen Draco Malfoy to carry out a secret mission. Severus Snape makes an Unbreakable Vow with Draco's mother, Narcissa, to protect Draco and fulfill the assignment if he fails.
, 2h18Directed by David Yates
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Themes Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Harry Potter, Ghost films, Children's films
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis
Roles Novel
Rating75%
Harry Potter is forced to defend himself against charges of using magic while underage, and in the presence of his Muggle cousin Dudley, after the two are attacked by Dementors. The Order of the Phoenix, a secret organisation founded by Albus Dumbledore, inform the now pending expulsion Harry that the Ministry of Magic is oblivious to Lord Voldemort's return; under the Ministry's influence, The Daily Prophet has launched a smear campaign towards Harry and Dumbledore following Harry's encounter with Voldemort at the end of the previous year. This encounter had a huge psychological effect on Harry – he has nightmares not only about what happened in the graveyard but also about the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic. While at the Order's headquarters, Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, mentions that Voldemort is after an object which he did not have last time.
, 2h37Directed by Mike Newell
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Themes Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Mermaids in film, Harry Potter, Films about dragons, Ghost films, Children's films
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robert Pattinson, Robbie Coltrane, Ralph Fiennes
Roles Novel
Rating77%
Harry Potter dreams of Frank Bryce, who is killed after overhearing Lord Voldemort discussing plans with Peter "Wormtail" Pettigrew and Barty Crouch Jr. At the Quidditch World Cup, Death Eaters terrorise the spectators, and Crouch Jr. summons the Dark Mark, otherwise known as the curse "Morsmordre".
, 2h22Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Fantastic, Fantasy, Adventure
Themes Films about animals, Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Time travel films, Wolves in film, Harry Potter, Ghost films, Werewolves in film, Children's films, Mise en scène d'un mammifère
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths
Roles Novel
Rating79%
Harry Potter, now aged 13, has been spending another dissatisfying summer at Privet Drive. When Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge, insults Harry's parents, he becomes angry and accidentally causes her to inflate and float away. Harry flees with his luggage, fed up with his life with the Dursleys. The Knight Bus delivers Harry to the Leaky Cauldron, where he is forgiven by Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge for using magic outside of Hogwarts. After reuniting with his best friends Ron and Hermione, Harry learns that Sirius Black, a convicted supporter of the dark wizard Voldemort, who murdered Harry's parents, has escaped Azkaban prison, intending to kill Harry.
, 2h41Directed by Chris Columbus
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Fantastic, Fantasy, Adventure
Themes Films about animals, Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Films about spiders, Harry Potter, Ghost films, Children's films
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Kenneth Branagh, John Cleese, Heather Bleasdale
Roles Novel
Rating74%
Harry Potter spends the summer at the Dursleys' house without receiving letters from his Hogwarts friends. He is sent to his room by The Dursleys to avoid embarassing them in front of Uncle Vernon's friends, who are coming over as guests.
, 2h32Directed by Chris Columbus
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Fantastic, Fantasy, Adventure
Themes Films about education, Films about children, Films about magic and magicians, Harry Potter, Ghost films, Children's films
Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith
Rating76%
Harry Potter is a seemingly ordinary boy, living with his hostile relatives, the Dursleys in Surrey. On his eleventh birthday, Harry learns from a mysterious stranger, Rubeus Hagrid, that he is actually a wizard, famous in the Wizarding World for surviving an attack by the evil Lord Voldemort when Harry was only a baby. Voldemort killed Harry's parents, but his attack on Harry rebounded, leaving only a lightning-bolt scar on Harry's forehead and rendering Voldemort powerless. Hagrid reveals to Harry that he has been invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. After buying his school supplies from the hidden London street, Diagon Alley, Harry boards the train to Hogwarts via the concealed Platform 9¾ in King's Cross Station.
Production
Directed by David Yates
Origin USA
Genres Fantastic, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Actors Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Callum Turner
Roles Producer
Rating62%
L'intrigue principale de cet épisode se déroule au Brésil (notamment à Rio de Janeiro), probablement dans les années 1930.