Harry Potter brought wealth but took away anonymity
Grint was 11 when he was cast in the first Harry Potter film. He went on to appear in all eight feature-length instalments, as well as associated video games, before the film series ended in 2011.
His co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are also thought to have earned substantial fortunes from the franchise, which transformed its young cast into international celebrities before most of them were old enough to drive.
For Grint, the consequences extended well beyond his bank balance. After spending much of his childhood and adolescence in public view, he said he could barely remember what life had been like before fame.
“I struggle to remember life before it,” he said. “I think I lost myself a little bit along the way.”
His description of the ordinary freedom he misses was rather less glamorous than the usual complaints about celebrity.
“Sometimes you just want to go to B&Q.”
Why Grint stepped away after the final film
When the Harry Potter series finished, Grint took a break from acting because he felt he had “missed out on normal things”.
His first post-Potter priority was not another role or an expensive holiday. It was having his tonsils removed.
Grint said the operation had been delayed while he was working on the films because producers did not want to accommodate the recovery period and were concerned that surgery might alter his voice.
“It was too much recovery time and there was the fear that it would change my voice,” he said.
It was an unusually literal example of how tightly the franchise shaped his early life: even routine surgery had to wait until Hogwarts closed.
Rupert Grint built a career beyond Ron Weasley
Grint has continued acting since leaving the role that made him famous, appearing in Sky One's dark comedy Sick Note and AMC's television reboot of Snatch.
He is also starring in the BBC One adaptation of Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, scheduled for broadcast over Christmas, alongside John Malkovich as detective Hercule Poirot.
Those projects have allowed Grint to establish a career outside the Potter films, although escaping their cultural shadow is a considerably harder assignment. He spent a decade playing Ron during the years in which most people are still deciding what they want to become.
Comfort matters more to Grint than the figure
The reported £28 million attached to Grint's name remains an estimate rather than a figure confirmed by the actor. His own answer is simpler: he knows he is financially comfortable, and that appears to be enough.
His comments also point to the less measurable cost of becoming famous at 11. The films provided extraordinary security, but they left him wondering which ordinary experiences had passed him by.
Money can buy considerable privacy. As Grint has discovered, it cannot always provide an anonymous trip to B&Q.
