Tom Felton taking a year off?

[GulPlum]

Regina wrote:
> In the issue of Nickelodeon Magazine:
> 
> Do you think acting will be your career?
> 
> "No, I don't.  My plan is to continue acting until I'm sixteen, 
then 
> travel for a year, fishing with my brother." 
> 
>  He goes on to say he wants to go to fishery management college.  
> Isn't Tom 15?  

He is now. :-) (IMDb has his birthday as 22 September 1987). I think 
I know what you're getting at: presumably he'd say "until next year" 
rather than "until I'm 16"?

I suspect that most of the interviews were done during the summer, at 
which stage he would have naturally referred to being 16 rather 
than "next year", as he still thought of himself as being 14.

Please note that cumpulsory education in Britain ends at 16 with 
GCSEs. Those who wish to go on to university need to stay on for 
another couple of years and do A Levels at 18. Tom's statements 
therefore make perfect sense.

Please also note that "college" is one of those words with a slightly 
different meaning in British and American usage. As I understand it, 
in normal US usage, "college" is to all practical intents and 
purposes a synonym for "university". In normal British usage (though 
admittedly there are exceptions), colleges are vocational, or "trade" 
schools, which offer hands-on training in a given field rather than 
academic study, although many (if not all) Colleges nowadays also 
offer academic graduate courses leading to BAs, MAs and MBAs.

The Fishery college Tom describes sounds like just such a place. 
Here's what one in Scotland, which may or may not be the one Tom has 
in mind, has to offer: http://www.nafc.ac.uk/courses.htm

> How could Tom take off a year?  And what is a "fishery"? 

Easy. He finishes school at 16, as is his right, then goes off with 
his brother, and then enrols at college. It's more common for "gay 
years" to be taken between A Levels and unversity rather than between 
GCSEs and college, but it's by no means unusual. 

Fisheries are places where fish are reared. I'd have thought it was 
pretty self-explanatory. :-) With this being an island country, what 
lives in the water is pretty important to our economy (not to mention 
diet). The link above has lots of interesting information about what 
they do.

> Aren't the movies being made back to back?  

That's a rumour started by IMDb without any apparent support from the 
production team. The official line is that Heyman, Columbus & Co 
haven't even started thinking about GoF other than setting Kloves to 
work on the screenplay. In an ideal world, GoF will go into 
production towards the end of 2004 (personally, I can't decide 
whether or not I like the idea of its being made into two movies)with 
a release towards the end of 2005.

*HOWEVER*, Dan will be 15 in summer 2004 and embarking on the first 
year of his own GCSEs that September (most GCSEs have a major element 
of "continuous assessment" over two years) and judging by his 
parents' attitude (and, seemingly, his own now), they are going to 
have to prioritise, and choose between his education and his film 
career. 

Yes, he's done well with his on-set tutoring, but this is slightly 
different. I very strongly suspect that this is what Columbus had in 
mind with his cryptic "If I were a betting man" spiel. The production 
team thus will also have to prioritise, and decide whether to launch 
into making GoF with a new leading man (not fogetting that if Tom's 
decision to bow out of acting next year comes to fruition, Draco will 
also need to be re-cast, although he doesn't have much of a role in 
GoF and wouldn't be needed much), or to wait until summer 2005 and 
continue with Dan. (Under British law, during the summer holidays, 
kids from 15 can work all the hours they want.)

All in all, I consider it *exceptionally* unlikely that GoF will be 
made immediately upon completion of PoA.