Harry Melling: From Dudley Dursley to Pillion and a Character Actor’s Second Act

For a decade, Harry Melling was the boy who got the pig’s tail. He was cast as Dudley Dursley, Harry Potter’s spoiled cousin, at age 10, and played him in five films, from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001 to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 in 2010. Audiences who last saw him in the Dursleys’ living room have had a lot to catch up on since. Melling spent the years after Hogwarts on stage, wrote a play of his own, and became one of Britain’s most distinctive character actors.

Where did Harry Melling start?

Melling was born in London on March 17, 1989. His maternal grandfather was the actor Patrick Troughton. He joined the National Youth Theatre as a teenager and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). His first screen role, Dudley, came before any of that.

Dudley was a small part, but it ran across the whole series. By Deathly Hallows – Part 1 in 2010, Melling had grown up in earnest. The production used a fat suit so he could return to the role. He later said that leaving the character behind let him start a new career, because audiences no longer saw him only as Dudley.

What did he do after Harry Potter?

He went to the theater. In 2009 he appeared in Mother Courage and Her Children at the Royal National Theatre, and the same venue brought him back in 2010 for Women Beware Women. He played Sir Benjamin Backbite in The School for Scandal at the Barbican in 2011 and Christopher Isherwood in I Am a Camera at Southwark Playhouse in 2012. In 2013 he was the Fool in King Lear at Chichester, and in 2016 he played Edgar in another King Lear, at the Old Vic.

He also became a writer. In 2014 he made his playwriting debut at the HighTide Festival with Peddling, a one-man show he wrote and performed, and it traveled to New York that year. Television filled in the gaps: he appeared in the BBC’s Merlin and Just William, and in Garrow’s Law.

Which role changed everything?

The turning point was the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in 2018. Melling played the Artist, a limbless performer who recites Shakespeare and Scripture to small crowds, in the segment “Meal Ticket” opposite Liam Neeson. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker wrote that the performance haunted him. Melling has described being cast by Joel and Ethan Coen as a huge moment for him as an actor.

The part opened doors. Director Scott Cooper has said he cast Melling as a young Edgar Allan Poe in The Pale Blue Eye (2022), opposite Christian Bale, because of what he saw in Buster Scruggs. Between those two films came a run of memorable supporting parts:

• Roy Laferty, an evangelical preacher, in The Devil All the Time (2020)
• Harry Beltik, the chess player who meets Beth Harmon, in the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit (2020), for which he learned to play chess
• Malcolm in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
• Thomas Wriothesley in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (2024)

Why was Pillion such a breakthrough?

Pillion is Harry Lighton’s debut feature, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’s novella Box Hill. Melling plays Colin, a shy London parking attendant and barbershop singer whose life changes when he meets a biker named Ray, played by Alexander Skarsgård. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in May 2025, reached UK cinemas on November 28, 2025, and opened in the US through A24 on February 6, 2026.

It was the first time Melling carried a film as its lead, and the reviews noticed. He won best actor prizes at the Valladolid, Thessaloniki and Stockholm festivals in 2025 and was nominated for best lead performance at the British Independent Film Awards. The film itself earned three BAFTA nominations in early 2026: Outstanding British Film, Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, and Adapted Screenplay. Melling has said he wants to make work that is “eccentric and unusual.”

What is Harry Melling doing now?

His latest film is Stuffed, a musical horror romance with Jodie Comer, in which he plays Bernie. It was shot in Wales in September 2025 and opened the Discovery program at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2026. Variety reviewed it on September 11, 2026. He also has a 2026 credit as Marat in Butterfly Jam, from director Kantemir Balagov.

The boy fans first met in the Dursleys’ hallway is now in his thirties and building a career of odd, committed character parts. The fans who remember Dudley have watched him do it one role at a time.

Header photo: John Sears / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0, resized