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Harry Potter star was under contract not to fix his teeth

Written by . Published: September 16 2013

Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis spent a decade sporting unsightly crooked teeth because film bosses ordered him not to undergo cosmetic dentistry.


The British actor played geeky Neville Longbottom in all eight of the wizard movies after being cast in the role as a child, and he has now revealed he was instructed not to let his dentist fit him with a brace in order to help keep him in character.


Lewis, now 24, finally had his teeth fixed after completing work on the final film, 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2.


He tells Britain's Independent on Sunday he hated living with "pretty bad teeth" for so long, adding, "I had to go for 10 f**king years without having anything done."


The actor, who is now unrecognisable as the pudgy young boy from the films, admits studio bosses also put him in a "fat suit" and ordered him to wear false teeth when they realized he was outgrowing his geeky look.


He adds, "When we got to film three, and I'd got quite tall and slimmed out a bit, they decided 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...


"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 of attractive girls... and you have to wear this fat suit, and have this long, greasy hair... it was rubbish. It was really rubbish."

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