Kooky witch to America’s sweetheart
She made her name as Harry Potter’s ethereal pal Luna, now she’s wowing fans with her moves on Dancing With The Stars. In between there’s been highs and lows for Evanna Lynch, who’s gone from...
‘I wanted to be a dancer rather than an actor’ ‘Others could play Luna. Evanna is Luna’
IT wasn’t just Evanna Lynch’s heartfelt tribute to the late film director Simon Fitzmaurice that has ensured her top billing in the Dancing With The Stars final. In the latest season of the hit US behemoth, the Co. Louth-born Harry Potter actress has emerged from the shadow of Luna Lovegood to become something of a national sweetheart.
In the semi-final, just as she has done for much of Season 27, Lynch cut a powerful and elegant swathe on America’s most famous dancefloor. Not only did her emotional routine with Keo Motsepe earn her a perfect 30, a sprightly foxtrot from The Greatest Showman bagged her an impressive 28 points earlier in the show. Earlier in the season, she captured viewers’ hearts when she was filmed in rehearsals with her dad Donal.
There’s no doubting that Lynch and Motsepe have the certain something that ensures longevity in TV shows of this nature. Theirs is an easy-going, natural chemistry. What’s more, they both appear emotionally invested in their place in the competition.
‘Keo’s first words of advice to me were to just be myself,’ Lynch recalled in a recent interview. ‘He said don’t try and do the moves the same way other people do it or the same way he was doing it, like I would have to find my own way to move, and that’s something that he’s still reminding me.
Of her favourite part of the Dancing With The Stars experience, she adds: ‘It’s (having Keo) as a partner because he is so talented and so hard-working and committed and also so creative. The fact that every week he’s amazed in me and he thinks that I can do more. In the first week, I was like, “I just really want to be pushed. I want it to hurt. I want it to feel like I’m growing,” and Keo never backed away from that.’
Still, even Lynch seems surprised that she has made it all the way to the final, seeing off the likes of Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton, singer Tinashe and NFL star DeMarcus Ware.
‘I’ve actually found it hard on this show as it’s big personalities, extroverts,’ the 27-year-old admitted on the Ryan Tubridy Show earlier this week. ‘A lot of people said to me starting out, “Oh, you’re going to have to come out of your shell. You’re going to have to be less shy.”
‘You know, I didn’t really. I didn’t have to change anything. I’m still here; I’m still in the semi-final. There’s something that resonates with some people — me being my normal, grounded, somewhat more quiet self.’
All in all, reaching the semi-final of America’s biggest reality show is not bad going for someone who also describes herself thus: ‘A little known fact, I’m actually a failed dancer, because I wanted to be a dancer rather than an actor,’ she confessed. ‘But I didn’t really have the technique because I’d spent a few years doing the Harry Potter films and I wasn’t really focused.’
Failed dancer or not, Lynch appears to have finally found her milieu. It’s the latest milestone in an already eventful career for the Termonfeckin beauty; a career that has seen dizzying highs and desolate lows.
The youngest of three children to Donal and Marguerite Lynch, she enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Louth, initially attending Cartown National School in Termonfeckin and later, Our Lady’s College in Drogheda, where her father was the deputy principal.
Even in her early years, Lynch showed guts and tenacity. In 2003, the then unknown 11-year-old was a patient at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, but was let out for the morning so she could queue outside the O’Connell Street branch to get her signed copy of the latest Harry Potter book.
After writing fan mail to author JK Rowling as a youngster, she sourced casting calls via Harry Potter fansites, of her own volition. Under the watchful eye of her slightly bewildered parents, Lynch took herself off to London to audition alongside 15,000 other hopefuls, and landed the role of kooky Luna Lovegood at the tender age of 14.
As Harry Potter producer David Heyman was once moved to comment of Lynch: ‘Others could play Luna, Evanna Lynch is Luna.’ Harry Potter creator JK Rowling similarly warmed to her ethereal disposition, describing her as ‘perfectly cast’.
Working on the set was clearly a dream come true for Lynch, but still, there were dark nights of the soul along the way: ‘I think there’s that Catholic part inside of me — you have to work hard and earn your rewards, and there has to be blood and sacrifice,’ she admitted in 2004.
‘In a way I don’t feel I worked for it. And when you push hard and badger casting directors, you feel such a sense of victory when you do get a job.’
As Pottermania raged around the globe, its young stars grappled with their new-found extreme fame with varying degrees of success. Would they find it hard to shake off the child actor tag, or the sheer weight of typecasting? Would working on Harry Potter, as one older actor warned them, be as good as it gets for them? Would they be forced from their broomsticks and blue-screens back to normality?
Lynch has befallen many of these fates to some extent. At the apex of Harry Potter’s stranglehold on pop culture, Lynch’s co-star Jason Isaacs encouraged the then 19-year-old to move from London to LA to capitalise on the franchise’s success. Yet she found it hard to escape the long shadow of her most famous part.
‘My manager was sending me for a lot of conventional, America’s sweetheart roles, and I thought, “damn, I’m not going to get these”,’ she is quoted as saying. ‘I’m an eccentric actor, which means I’m not right for many things.’
In the years following the winding down of the Harry Potter franchise, Lynch was kept relatively busy. There were two short films, a stint on TV epic Sinbad, an ill-fated TV pilot, an indie flick called GBF and a neverran film project, Monster Butler, costarring Malcolm McDowell and Gary Oldman. It was a steep learning curve, yet Lynch’s big break was still eluding her in the direct aftermath of Pottermania.
‘I remember Jason Isaacs saying to me that to move out to LA, you have to make sure you really want it,’ Lynch has said. ‘People aren’t doing you any favours here. You can’t coast on something you did before as there are so many talented and ambitious people here.’
Intent on exploring a potential Plan B, Lynch tried teaching and art, and eventually trained as a certified yoga instructor in 2013: a discipline she has loved since she was 11. In her own words, she fully embraced ‘the whole LA thing’, and became a vegan in 2015 — animal rights advocates have given her cruelty-free dance shoes on Dancing With The Stars an approving thumbs-up.
‘Anyone who has been through an eating disorder needs to do something physical to give themselves peace of mind,’ she has said. ‘I don’t believe in nourishing just one part of the soul or mind or body: I want to pay attention to all of them.
‘I don’t think anyone can just be an actor. Acting jobs, when they come along, I see them as a real gift... but I needed a real person job. Acting can be very solitary, and very “me-meme”. Yoga puts it all back in balance.’
Incidentally, 2015 would prove a much more rewarding year for the actress: she was nominated for an IFTA for her role in Simon Fitzmaurice’s My Name Is Emily.
Dublin-based director Liz Gill was a support director on the film. ‘Evanna was a joy to work with,’ she enthuses. ‘Her involvement and commitment really made the film possible, and she and Simon shared a deep understanding and friendship.
‘On top of that she was the ultimate professional, always giving 100% to the project, crew and other actors. We were lucky to work with her and I’m delighted by her current success.’
These days, Lynch lives in London and, according to one recent report, enjoys a longdistance relationship with singer-songwriter boyfriend Andel. Last year, she split with her ex of nine years, Robbie Jarvis — another Harry Potter alumnus — although the pair remain firm friends.
Speaking about her relationship with Andel, Lynch has been quoted as saying: ‘It’s about, I like this person better than everyone else and they bring something to my life. I’m all about relationships being a real friendship. Checking every day, seeing how they are and just having a best friend that you can really talk to.’
Overcoming anorexia has become one of Lynch’s other great triumphs. By the age of 11, Lynch had alas begun her battle with eating disorders. ‘It was awful for my mum,’ Lynch has said. ‘She wondered what had gone wrong? Where did this come from? But it wasn’t anything like that.
‘It was a struggle for identity. My siblings are all go-getters, so brainy. My sister got 600 points in her Leaving Cert. That left me wondering: what the hell am I going to do? I have nothing special to give.’
Somewhat curiously, Lynch’s anorexia battle had a hand in her fortuitous bond with Rowling. ‘I had talked about how I had a relationship with JK Rowling, writing to her beforehand, that it meant a lot to me,’ Lynch has said.
‘People would ask: “Why did she write to you?” And it was because I was sick, and I was asking for advice, and telling her how much her books had helped me, and that was what touched her.’
More recently, Lynch admitted that she still battles with negative thoughts around body image but has slowly learned to manage them. ‘I would say, it’s a lifelong battle,’ she said recently. ‘I think the reason it’s so intense when you’re a teenager is you’re not used to those feelings. When you’re depressed, bullied, rejected, you’ve never had such intense emotions at once and it feels like the world is ending.
‘You do recover from an eating disorder but the negative voice in your head, that’s something you’re always going to have to manage.’
No matter where Lynch places in the Dancing With The Stars final, her status as one of America’s freshly minted treasures is pretty much assured.
In terms of next steps, America seems very much for the taking, yet at a recent Hollywood gala event, the actress was asked about a possible return to the world of Harry Potter. Judging from her answer, it would seem that Lynch has spent some time pondering this very possibility.
‘I would love if they did a TV series, and just do a chapter a week where they explore all the little things that were left out in the movies, where it’s not just focused on so much with the climax with the Voldemort battle. It’s more about their school and their personal lives and everything,’ she enthused.
So far, it’s the sort of project that would send Potter fans into a frenzy, though has yet to materialise. But given the somewhat fantastical ride in life that Lynch has enjoyed so far, it’s safe to say that anything is possible.
‘Anorexia was a struggle for identity’