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Meet the world-traveling Weasleys 

The Weasley twins — aka James Phelps and Oliver Phelps — landed in Chicago on Monday night after a whirlwind tour through Switzerland, Belgium and London, all for their film “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” opening today.We caught up with the bleary-eyed siblings Tuesday at Chicago’s Hotel Monaco where the Phelpses, who play Fred and George Weasley, conducted a fast chat on what it means to be student wizards. Q: What’s the best thing about being part of the “Harry Potter” movies?James: One of them has to be traveling around the world doing this kind of stuff. I don’t know too many 21-year-olds who’ve been to the places we’ve been and done the things that we’ve done. We’ve been fortunate to have this kind of life. Oliver: Yeah. Definitely.

Q: You both have grown what, like eight inches since you started the movies?

Oliver: Probably. We’re about 6-foot-2 or -3 inches now.

Q: Has anyone mentioned replacing you because of your height?

James: No, not that we know of. But when we’re in a shot with someone, they’ll stand them up on a box so we don’t  look so tall. Tricks of the camera, you know?

Q: How long do you dye your hair?

James: It’s dyed pretty much nine to 10 months out of the year. That’s when people know we’re filming again when we walk in with ginger hair as opposed to brown. That’s when people kind of recognize us. We’re quite fortunate we really have brown hair. Then we’re under the radar.

Oliver: They don’t just do our hair, but our eyebrows as well. It takes a while to do it. Then every three weeks we have to go and get our roots touched up, which isn’t much of a macho thing to say. It’s like, “Hey, do you want to go out for a drink, lads?” and you say, “No, I’ve got to get my roots done!” It doesn’t always sit very well.

Q: How did you get the roles of the Weasleys?

James: We found out there were auditions going for the Harry Potter film. We went to Leeds, about three hours travel, and went to a hotel like this one. Thousands of kids there all going for different roles. Had it been in our own hometown, we probably would have gone home. We were waiting three hours.

There was two rooms, one on the left and one on the right. We went into the one on the left. To this day, I think about what would have happened if we’d gone into the right room. Would we be where we are right now?

Q: Now for the National Enquirer question: Do you have girlfriends?

James: We’re single at the moment. When you’re away for six days out of the week, it’s very hard to have a girlfriend.

Q: Do you guys ever get big Hollywood heads?

James: I don’t think so.

Oliver: You can’t get a big head around friends like ours. They’re very good to us.

Posted on July 12th, 2007 by Administrator
Filed under: Harry Potter News