Fans have been left shocked by Tom Felton’s extreme salary for just thirty-one minutes of screen time in Harry Potter.
“31 minutes? That’s insane. His father will hear about this,” joked one fan.
“Either he or his manager were great negotiators. Gotta take advantage of being a child celebrity heartthrob that the studios knew there’d be hell to pay from millions of girls if he wasn’t rebooked throughout the whole series. And getting the order to take a hit out on Dumbledore ain’t cheap either!” said another.
Scroll on to find out more…
Tom Felton will probably always be known for one role.
From the moment we saw him in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone way back in 2001, he’s been Draco Malfoy to us.
And aside from the 3 biggest stars…
We’d always assumed Malfoy was right behind them, in terms of screen time.
But it turns out, we were very wrong.
Felton actually only appeared in thirty-one minutes of the movie franchise, across all 8 movies!
But it was recently revealed that Felton’s paycheck did not reflect this meager screentime.
And the internet has been left shocked at his massive fee!
Alongside his role as Draco, Felton is known for being shipped with Emma Watson (aka, Hermione).
“There’s always been something that’s like, I don’t know, a kinship,” he admitted.
But it’s not just these 2 who saw it either…
Fellow Harry Potter star Rupert Grint even agreed that there was chemistry between his costars, saying: “There was a little bit of a spark.”
Speaking to ET Online in 2019, he said “there was always something” between Watson and Felton.
And fans even got an inside scoop on their relationship…
Felton has written a memoir, for which Watson has written the foreword.
In his memoir, Felton admitted he had a “secret love for Watson.” But “not perhaps in the way that people might want to hear.”
“That isn’t to say that there’s never been a spark between us. There most definitely has, only at different times.
“Rumours started to abound that there was more to our relationship than we were letting on. I denied that I liked her in that way, but the truth was different,” he wrote.
He added: “My girlfriend at the time knew straight away that there was something unspoken between us.
“I remember using the familiar old line, ‘I love her like a sister.’ But there was more to it than that.”
“I don’t think I was ever in love with Emma, but I loved and admired her as a person in a way that I could never explain to anybody else.
“We were kindred spirits. I know for certain I’ll always have Emma’s back, and she’ll always have mine too,” Felton wrote.
And Watson agreed she felt it too!
Watson wrote that their relationship “didn’t start well” as she was a “rather annoying 9-year-old girl who followed him round like a puppy.”
She wrote that was “desperate for his attention” at that age.
“Like Tom, I always struggle to explain to people the nature of our connection and relationship,” she said.
Her foreword continued: “For more than twenty years now, we’ve loved each other in a special way, and I’ve lost count of the times people have said to me, ‘You must have drunkenly made out, just once!’”
“But what we have is far deeper than that.”
She said her and Felton’s relationship is “one of the purest loves I can think of.”
“We’re soulmates, and we’ve always had each other’s backs. I know we always will.”
The star wrote that it makes her “emotional to think about it.”
“Even when he doesn’t have the whole picture, he’ll never doubt that I’m coming from a good place and will have done my very best.”
“That’s true friendship and to be seen and loved like that is one of the greatest gifts of my life,” she said.
The foreword ends with an incredibly touching message where she calls Felton a “little piece of my soul.”
“The world is lucky to have you, but I’m even luckier to have you as my friend.”
And alongside this enormously important relationship, Felton gained something else from his roles in the Harry Potter movies…
People have been divided as to whether he deserved his enormous paycheck.
“He deserves it whether he had 2 minutes on screen or 100 minutes. He made the narrative around Harry interesting. Aside from ‘He whose name should not be mentioned’ he was considered Harry’s main rival. The competition between houses while Potter was in School made more sense because of the rivalry,” wrote one person.
“It’s sickening that celebrities make this much. People make fractions of that amount annually,” another disagreed.
So, how does Felton’s screen time stack up against his other stars?
Well, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson or Rupert Grint, had 539 minutes, 205 minutes and 211 minutes, respectively.
Felton had even less screen time than Hagrid, played by Robbie Coltrane, who had forty-five minutes…
And he was beaten out by Voldemort, played by Ralph Fiennes, who had thirty-seven minutes.
But Felton’s thirty-one-minute role garnered him a whopping £14 million ($16.1 million).
That’s £451,613 ($522,455) per minute.
And Felton told the Express he had spent it on “typical teenage stuff.”
“I bought a lot of rubbish things that kids buy: skateboards and clothes and typical teenage stuff. And, as soon as I could, I wasted a lot of money on cars — BMWs mostly — for myself and my family.”
“My mum told me: ‘You have worked hard for it so get what you want, but beware, you will lose money on cars.'”
“And she was right.”
He claimed he eventually ended up with “a bailiff at the door.”
But has since gotten his finances back in order.
What do you think about Felton’s massive paycheck?