Every Actor Who Has Played Grindelwald In Harry Potter & Fantastic Beasts

Many actors have taken on the role of Gellert Grindelwald throughout the course of the Harry Potter franchise, especially as Fantastic Beasts brought him into the spotlight. Each iteration of the infamous wizard Gellert Grindelwald has been wildly different from the other with each actor bringing their own flavor to the role. Gellert Grindelwald is mentioned a few times throughout the Harry Potter books, but his first official introduction was in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book as an old ‘friend’ hidden in Dumbledore’s past.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it is revealed that Grindelwald and Dumbledore were extremely close in the past and together had planned to bring the wizarding world out of the shadows and subdue the non-magical population. Dumbledore eventually realized the error in this plan after the death of sister Ariana and distances himself from Grindelwald. Grindelwald went ahead with his plan but was eventually stopped by Dumbledore in a grand duel. This backstory would become one of the storylines explored in the Fantastic Beasts prequel series.

Throughout the years, Grindelwald has been played by five different actors, some appearing in the original Harry Potter series, others in the Fantastic Beasts series. Some performances were cameos while others only appear in flashbacks. However, some actors who took on the role got to fully embrace the role of the famed dark wizard. Here is a breakdown of all the actors who have played Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts films.

Jamie Campbell Bower

Jaime Campbell Bower was the first actor to step into the role of Grindelwald and the actor who has remained the most consistent throughout both franchises. He first took on the role in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 as a young Gellert Grindelwald in photographs and flashbacks. Grindelwald’s backstory with Dumbledore is briefly explored, but the film puts more focus on Grindelwald’s connection to the Elder Wand instead. He physically looks as Grindelwald is described in the books with haunting good looks that draw people to him. While Jamie Campbell Bower’s appearance is reduced to non-speaking in Deathly Hallows, he still manages to set up the character so audiences can understand the kind of person he was with his looming presence while in photographs with a young Dumbledore as well as his agile movements while stealing the Elder Wand.

Bower later reprised the role in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Once again, his role was kept to flashbacks as Jude Law’s Dumbledore thinks back on when he and Grindelwald created a blood pact so they could never harm one another. The scene is one of few that show Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s relationship in way that suggests they were involved romantically, with them interlocking their hands and staring into one another’s eyes. The appearance of Bower’s version of Grindelwald is also updated with him now having heterochromia, the condition of having two different colored eyes, which was added for the Fantastic Beasts films.

Michael Byrne

Along with Jamie Campbell Bower, Michael Byrne also played the role of Grindelwald in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. He played the character in the present-day timeline of the Harry Potter series, now an old man in prison paying for his past crimes. The older Grindelwald only appears in one scene, similar to in the Deathly Hallows book, where Grindelwald is questioned by Voldemort about the Elder Wand. Byrne’s portrayal of Grindelwald is wildly different from the character in the book. The book version of Grindelwald had seen the error of his ways and refused to tell Voldemort what he wanted to know, eventually leading to the death of the character. Byrne’s film version of the character, however, delights in telling Voldemort that the Elder Wand lies with Dumbledore in his grave, even laughing as Voldemort leaves to retrieve it.

While Byrne is not featured in the sequel series, his version of Grindelwald remains starkly different from the performances shown in the Fantastic Beasts films. While Grindelwald has done terrible things in all three films, he never shows pleasure in the idea of hurting Dumbledore, instead only showing anger, sadness or even indifference to any mention of his name. Byrne’s difference from the other Gellert Grindelwald performances, however, could be explained by the lack of knowledge of how deep Grindelwald’s feelings were for Dumbledore at the time Deathly Hallows was being made. Regardless, Byrne’s performance remains the most different portrayal of Grindelwald to date.

Colin Farrell

Colin Farrell was the first actor to play Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts series, though it was on a technicality. Grindelwald was teased as a background threat in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, instead setting up the American Auror Percival Graves, played by Colin Farrell, to be the main villain of the film. In a twist ending, however, Newt Scamander reveals Graves to be Grindelwald in disguise. So, while Colin Farrell outwardly looks like a different character, all of his words and actions were that of Grindelwald, so Farrell did play the role.

Farrell’s interpretation of Grindelwald puts focus on his dangerous and malicious side, spending most of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film hunting down a child Obscurus to use for his world-dominating plans. Farrell also manages to slip in major hints to Fantastic Beasts’ Grindelwald twist by showing fake kindness to those he is harming (a trait later seen in Grindelwald performances) and immediately finding ways to bring Dumbledore into conversations. Perhaps the largest hint that Farrell is playing Grindelwald is the similar introduction shots of Percival Graves and Grindelwald. Both are introduced with a shot of the back of their head with the same haircut.

Johnny Depp

Originally, the main actor set to play Grindelwald throughout the Fantastic Beasts series was Johnny Depp. He first made a cameo at the end of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them with Colin Farrell slowly turning into Johnny Depp, revealing the twist that Grindelwald was the villain all along. In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Grindelwald was finally given center stage and audiences were able to see who the character really is for an entire film, not just restricted to cameos or flashbacks. The film was panned and became the first in the Wizarding World franchise to receive a majority of bad reviews and a low Rotten Tomatoes score of 36%. Depp was later asked to step down from the Fantastic Beasts series and the role of Grindelwald by Warner Bros after he lost his libel case against The Sun tabloid in the UK.

Along with the bad reviews of the film, Depp’s Grindelwald performance was met with a lot of criticism with critics and audiences feeling that it was similar to Depp’s performances in other films and not liking the new design of the character with bleach blonde hair and starkly different colored eyes. However, at a closer look, his performance is the most similar to how Grindelwald was set up in the Harry Potter books. Grindelwald’s manipulation and intelligence are cited as his greatest assets and Depp’s version of the character is the one that exemplifies these traits. His Grindelwald acts more like a puppet master, leading people to do horrible things as opposed to forcing them to. Depp is also the Grindelwald actor who looks the most like Jamie Campbell Bower, making it more believable that they are the same person at different times in their life. Nevertheless, Depp did not return to play Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore or any possible sequels, in part due to the controversy surrounding his legal proceedings at the time.

Mads Mikkelsen

Mads Mikkelsen was chosen to replace Johnny Depp as Grindelwald. Similar to Johnny Depp, Mikkelsen got the opportunity to play Grindelwald for an entire film as opposed to a cameo or flashback. As of present, Mikkelsen is the actor who has received the most praise for portraying the character despite the bad reception Secrets of Dumbledore received. Along with a new look with a more subtle color difference with his eyes and more understated hair color, Mikkelsen brought a quiet danger to the character, exuding confidence and intimidation when interacting with the other characters. The only downgrade for Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts 3 is that a lot of Grindelwald’s motivations or actions don’t make much sense in continuity to the Wizarding World or to how his character was previously set up.

However, Mads Mikkelsen’s Grindelwald stands out from the rest due to the focus put on his romantic relationship with Dumbledore. Audiences, especially LGBTQ+ viewers, were growing tired of the small teases of the same-sex relationship between the two wizards and wanted it to be fully explored. While Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore didn’t fully embrace the storyline, it did put more focus on it than its previous films by having Mikkelsen and Jude Law share screen time together that seemed to shy away less from the subject. While Fantastic Beasts 4 is still up in the air to being greenlit, most likely Mikkelsen would stay on to continue to play Grindelwald.

After a lot of recasting, Grindelwald has become the role played by the most people throughout the entire Wizarding World franchise. Understandably, audiences would be tired of the recasting by this point as, unlike the Joker, Grindelwald’s portrayals are supposed to be the same person, not completely different versions of the character. Perhaps, however, this constant recasting of Grindelwald throughout the Harry Potter seriesand the Fantastic Beasts series is a coincidental mirror to the character of Grindelwald and how he has many masks, many sides to him, and nobody could never tell who he truly was.