Bertie Carvel

It’s not a job he would have taken as a younger actor. “I would have run a million miles from a project like that. I’ve been more interested in variety, in not doing the same thing twice. But I’m a bit older now. I’ve got a bit less wanderlust, I’m happier to stay still.”

He lives in north London with his wife, the actress Sally Scott, and their five-year-old son. For the past three years he has spent half the year in Northern Ireland, playing PD James’s detective Adam Dalgliesh in three series of Dalgliesh on Channel 5 (“a study in stillness”, he calls it). The Winter’s Tale will take him to Stratford for the rest of the summer. The Potter series, meanwhile, will be shot in Leavesden studios, near Watford, 40 minutes’ drive from his home.

“I don’t know how it’s going to fit into my life. I’ve read one script, which I loved, and I’ve read the books. I hadn’t before I got the role. I think I saw one of the films, maybe two. As a boy if I had read these books I would have devoured them. So I am coming at it with a really open mind. Whether I come back [after the first series] probably depends on what the fans think. I mean, I’ll be furious if it’s not an amazing part.” He declines to talk about the online backlash some of the new cast have faced.