" 'Harry has always been my favourite boy's name, so if my daughter had been a son, he would have been Harry Rowling. Then I would have had to choose a different name for Harry in the books, because it would have been cruel to name him after my own son. 'Potter' was the surname of a family who used to live near me when I was seven years old and I always liked the name, so I borrowed it."

"Owls are traditionally associated with magic, and I like them."

"Dumbledore is 150 and Professor McGonagall is a sprightly 70. Wizards have a much longer life expectancy than Muggles."

"Uneasy co-existence. Harry discovers that life in the magical world mirrors, to a great extent, life in the Muggle world. We are all human. There's still bigotry and small-mindedness, unfortunately."

"You can do unfocused and uncontrolled magic without a wand, but to do really good spells, you need a wand."

"I wanted him to be physically marked by what he had been through. It was an outward expression of what he had been through inside. I gave him a scar and in a prominent place so other people would recognize him. It is almost like being the chosen one, or the cursed one, in a sense. Someone tried to kill him; that's how he got it. I chose the lightning bolt because it was the most plausible shape for a distinctive scar."

AMERICA DISCOVERS COLUMBUS:

With a name like Chris Columbus, you'd better be good, and the director of the first two Harry Potter films is very good, indeed. Columbus, born on September 10, 1958 in Spangler, Pennsylvania, got his start in Hollywood by selling his script of Gremlins (1984) to Steven Spielberg. A year later, he followed that with two more scripts to Spielberg: The Goonies and Young Sherlock Holmes. He made his directorial debut on 1987's Adventures In Babysittings which he followed a year later with Heartbreak Hotel. Phenomenal success came his way in 1990, when he directed the original Home Alone which quickly went on to become the biggest grossing comedy of all time and made a star of Macauley Culkin. The romantic drama Only The Lonely followed in 1991, before he returned to Culkin-land for Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (1992). After that was the Robin Williams starrer Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), the Hugh Grant comedy Nine Months (1995), the drama Stepmom (1998)- about a woman dying of cancer who has to deal with the fact that her ex-husband's new wife will be raising her kids (which he needed to direct following the loss of his own mother to that disease)- the sci-fi drama Bicentennial Man (1999) and, of course, the first two Harry Potter films.

J.K. ROWLING WAS "TERRIFIED"!:

It's a pretty well-known fact that director Chris Columbus was intent on remaining faithful to the Harry Potter novels when he adapted them to the big screen. Naturally, the ultimate arbiter on whether or not he was successful is creator J.K. Rowling. "I'd say a week from seeing the film, I was very excited," reflects Rowling, "and the closer the viewing came, the more frightened I became. To the point when I actually sat down to see the film, I was terrified, because it was way too late if bits were wrong. But at the end of the film, I was happy. I think the fans of the book will be happy. There is an awful lot of my book up there. All the important bits, I'd say. It's my plot and I think it's a very faithful adaptation. And there are spectacular performances: a really wonderful Hagrid, McGonagall and Snape, and a fabulous mountain troll- that's one of my favourite bits." Exciting for Rowling- and something quite unusual for authors whose novels are adapted to the big screen- was the fact that she was included in the filmmaking process. "I have script approval," she says, "and the writer, Steve Kloves, has been incredibly generous in allowing me to answer questions. It's actually been a lot of fun for me, because writing is a very solitary business, and to work collaboratively on something has been a real interesting experience."

THE AMERICANIZATION OF HARRY:

One of the big concerns about the adaption of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was that the property would be thoroughly "Americanized," thus losing much of it's original charm. Thankfully, this hasn't come to pass. "J.K Rowling is very clever," offers actor Robbie Coltrance, who plays Hagrid, "because there are no pockets of cultural references in her book or the film. There are no computers, and you could watch this film in 20 years and it would be the same film. No one had got on groovy skateboarding shoes." Rowling points out that very few changes were made between British editions and those around the world, though certain language alterations in the novel were necessary. "Arthur Levine, my American editor, and I decided that words should be altered only where we felt they would be incomprehensible, even in context, to an American reader," she says. "I have had some criticism from other British writers about allowing any changes at all, but I feel the natural extension of that arguement is to go and tell French and Danish children that we will not be translating Harry Potter, so they'd better learn English." Probably the biggest change was the fact that the first book and film are known as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in America, but as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone everywhere else in the world. "The title change was Arthur's idea initially," Rowling explains, "because he felt that the British title gave a misleading idea of the subject matter. We discussed several alternative titles and Sorcerer's Stone was my idea. To be honest, though, I wish I hadn't agreed now, but it was my first book, and I was so grateful that anyone was publishing me, I wanted to keep them happy."

DID-YA-KNOW's:

Did you know that King's Cross is a real place in England?
Did you know that Harry Potter was named after his father; his middle name is James.
Did you know that Daniel Radcliffe and Harry Potter both have birthday's in July? (Daniel's is July 23, and Harry's is July 31.)
Did you know that Rupert Grint and Tom Felton are actually older than the character that they play?
Did you know that Daniel Radcliffe played a joke on Robbie Coltrane? He changed the language on his cell phone to Turkish.
Did you know that unlike Harry, Daniel Radcliffe does not wear glasses?
Did you know that Dobby is an image from the computer and Tobi Jones plays his voice?
Did you know that Daniel and Emma's favourite Harry Potter book is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Rupert's is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets?
Did you know that if Daniel, Rupert, and Emma could all have powers that they'd want to be invisible?
Did you know that Daniel's favourite scene in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was the Chamber scene because it had the parseltongue as a challenge, and that Rupert's favourite scene was when he had to spit the slugs out of his mouth?
Did you know that "The Great Hall" in Hogwarts is a chapel called Gloucester Cathedral?