In a new interview with the Evening Standard, Harry Potter alum Katie Leung talked about what her life and career has been like since the series was completed. As we posted a couple weeks ago, Katie is set to star in a new short film by Daniel and Ateh Jewel called Sun Never Sets. The film is being funded by Kickstarter so they need everyone’s help to raise enough money (£25,000) to be able to film.

She is also currently starring in Run, a mini-series on Channel 4, which was originally going to air in March but instead started last night and continues until Thursday. Katie plays Ying, “a Chinese illegal immigrant selling DVDs to try to free herself from the vicious gang-master who brought her to Britain.”

She discusses Run in the interview:

The series [Run], […] starts [Monday] on Channel 4 and there is definitely no magic in Leung’s storyline. It is a gritty portrait of modern Britain, part of which involves Leung’s character being raped. “It’s difficult to watch, but I felt to give justice to the character it was needed and I was more than happy to do it,” she says. […] Run, she thought, “was a great script”. The physical challenge was the greatest, however as “I literally had to run quite a bit. There’s a scene where I’m running from the immigration officers and I pulled a muscle in my leg on the first day of shooting.”

She also talks about Harry Potter and her more recent roles:

“It hasn’t been a conscious decision to step away from Potter.” Leung’s last major role was on stage in a production of Wild Swans at the Young Vic last year. “I’m just lucky that projects I’ve had the chance to do have been away from it all and have been quite challenging roles.”

Leung first got the role in Harry Potter at an open casting when she was 16 years old. She and her father travelled to London together “with no expectations at all” but the director Mike Newell clearly saw something in her. “He asked me where I had trained and I said I hadn’t done any form of acting before. When I saw the surprise on his face, I thought, ‘maybe’.”

Finally she talked about her future and the difficulties with picking the right roles:

[…] “People had expectations that I would go on and do bigger and better things, which is pretty impossible if Potter is your first thing.” Leung briefly considered quitting acting but is now studying drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. There are more acting projects in the pipeline but Leung has to filter out the rubbish. “There have been quite a few things that I’ve had to say no to. It mainly involves nudity where it hasn’t been required. I’m quite a prude in that sense. I’m up for it if it’s going to be an epic script and it’s needed — like the rape scene in Run.”

Scripts can also be harder to come by because of her race, says Leung. “Because I’m Chinese I don’t get five scripts a day to read. That’s a limitation in itself. In a way we’re lucky, though, because there are fewer of us so we have more of a chance of getting the roles.”