Evanna Lynch , who playedLuna Lovegood in the "Harry Potter " saga, has saidfan culture can be "a bit unhealthy."- Lynch, who described herself as a Potter
superfan before being cast in the fifth movie, told the "Talking Tastebuds" podcast's latest episode: "It was so weird to go from being a fan that used to stalk Daniel Radcliffe to being someone people send fan mail to." - Lynch said she knew the cast members' birthdays and parents' names before she met them and had to pretend she didn't.
- She added: "It also meant I had nothing to say to them — my whole identity was poured into theirs and adoring them that I was just suddenly confronted with, 'Who the hell am I?'"
- Lynch said she got fan mail describing her as a best friend but said she didn't respond, as it's "just not healthy."
Evanna Lynch says fan culture is sometimes "not healthy."
Appearing on the latest episode of the "Talking Tastebuds" podcast, the actress said she used to be a superfan of the "Harry Potter" books and movies before being cast as Luna Lovegood at the age of 14 in the franchise's fifth entry, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."
"I was a really obsessive Harry Potter fan," Lynch said, adding that she started reading the books when she was about 8 years old and that it "was just my whole identity for a while."
"It's quite embarrassing," she said. "I did everything, I queued up for the books, I wrote fan mail to Daniel Radcliffe and got his autograph, and I wrote fan mail to
She added: "It was so weird to go from being a fan that used to stalk Daniel Radcliffe to being someone people send fan mail to."
Lynch said she was active on MuggleNet, a Potter fan website, but after she was cast couldn't interact with the community in the same manner as she could before.
After spending so long being part of it, she said, she thought "the whole fan culture is a bit unhealthy," not least because it made meeting the Potter actors, who became her colleagues, awkward at first.
"When I met Daniel, Rupert, and Emma, I knew everything about them: their pets' names, I knew their birthdays, I knew their parents' names," she said. "I had to pretend I didn't, and be like, 'Oh, a brand new person I don't know anything about."
She added: "It also meant I had nothing to say to them — my whole identity was poured into theirs and adoring them that I was just suddenly confronted with, 'Who the hell am I?' and when they asked me what I was interested in, I didn't know what to say, what do I say?"
The actress said that she had begun to get fan mail herself but that it could be a bit unhealthy.
"I get people messaging me being like, 'I think you're my real best friend,'" she said. "I don't respond to those people because it's just not healthy. It's hard because some people don't have the experience where they see it from the other side as I do, or they don't have therapy or things like that."
She added: "I just think fan culture is kind of dangerous, and you can lose yourself in it."