At least one Harry Potter actor had a really easy time moving on from the series

A certain generation’s deep affinity for the series hasn’t escaped Miriam Margolyes, who played Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Death Hallows – Part 2. But according to the veteran British-Australian actor—whose other credits include Yentl, Little Shop of Horrors, The Age Of Innocence, Romeo + Juliet, and more—Harry Potter just “doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to them.”

“For me, Harry Potter wasn’t important,” Margolyes says in a new conversation with Vogue UK’s Chris Godfrey. “I was very glad I got the part and I enjoyed being in it and meeting all the people, but it’s not Charles Dickens.”

Although Harry Potter may have never been more than a drip in the cauldron for Margolyes (she does have a BAFTA, after all), the actor also says the warm reaction she receives from fans of the series who may not have connected with her work otherwise definitely resonates, Dickens or not.

“People come up to me and say ‘I just love you’, and want to hug me. And that is dazzling,” Margolyes says, later recalling the time that one regional newspaper called her a “national trinket.” She mused, “That’s very witty and rather cutting actually. I’d like to be a national treasure, but I don’t know if I really am.”