This morning I got an email from Snitchseeker.com, a Harry Potter fansite, pointing me to some pics they have up of young Hero Fiennes-Tiffin (nephew of Ralph Fiennes, who plays the evil Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise). Fiennes-Tiffin is playing Young Tom Riddle (aka the Future Dark Lord, Voldemort) in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Nice call on the part of the casting director to have a relative of Fiennes play the younger character.
You can see all the pics over on Snitchseeker; they're apparently from another film the young actor is in, Bigga than Ben. Fiennes-Tiffin looks oh-so-sweet-and-innocent -- he hardly looks like the sort who'd grow up to wreak havoc on the wizarding world, tossing around Imperius curses at his enemies and plotting to rid the world of good guys like Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. But then again, it's always the innocent looking ones who sneak up on you and turn out to be evil dark lords trying to take over the world, isn't it?
In a way, I'm a bit reminded of how George Lucas went back to the beginning of Star Wars, casting cute little Jake Lloyd as Young Anakin. Oh, how I hated watching The Phantom Menace, watching that innocent little tyke running around with Obi-Wan, just knowing he was doomed to grow up to become Darth Vader. It wasn't as if there was any hope he wouldn't go down the dark path -- we'd already seen Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi at that point, so there wasn't a lot of room for doubt about what was going to happen.
Now we have this innocent-looking lad as Young Tom Riddle, and once again, we know what fate is going to befall him. Reading about Voldemort's history in The Half Blood Prince is one thing; it's another to look at that child on the big screen and know there's already the stirrings of evil brewing beneath those sweet eyes. Ah, well. Every bad guy, even Voldemort, was once a baby bouncing on his mother's knee, right? What do you think about the look of Young Voldemort? Does he have the look that suits the part?
1. "Ah, well. Every bad guy, even Voldemort, was once a baby bouncing on his mother's knee, right?"
Wrong. Not Voldemort.... if you had read this book than you would know that Voldemort was an orphan whose mother passed away shortly after childbirth.
Posted at 8:38PM on Jun 28th 2008 by Andrew