Embodied by Ralph Fiennes in the Harry Potter saga, the dark wizard Voldemort sports a pallid face, devoid of a nose, and particularly sinister. Here’s what he would have looked like as described in the original books…
A bald and pale skull, two reptilian cavities as nostrils, a sinister gaze and a mournful grin…
Seen at the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (on the skull of Professor Quirell) then present in all the feature films of the magic saga from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the dark magician who swore to kill the little wizard, played by Ralph Fiennes, has a scary appearance to say the least.
However, as the Twitter account of Imladris FilmsVoldemort’s face could have been even more monstrous if the film crews had followed JK Rowling’s description of the character in the original works to the letter.
“Livider than a skull, scarlet eyes wide open, flat nose, with two slits for nostrils, like snakes”she wrote in the fourth opus of the literary saga, insisting particularly on the proximity between Voldemort and the animal emblem of Slytherin.
Inspired by these few sentences, but also by the preparatory sculptures made by the film crews for the first opus – objects that are still kept among the Warner archives today -, web artists had fun modifying the appearance of the character in some scenes of the saga (see above).
Which of the two versions do you find more convincing?
(Re)discover all the hidden details of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”…