‘Harry Potter’ profile: Irish actress Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood

• VIDEO / ALL LUNA LOVEGOOD'S SCENES IN "HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX" / CLICK HERE
  
• STORY / EVANNA LYNCH REVEALS "HARRY POTTER" LOVE SECRET / CLICK HERE
  
• STORY / DEVON MURRAY BRINGS MORE IRISHNESS TO "HARRY POTTER" AS SEAMUS FINNIGAN / CLICK HERE
  

As American fans prepare for next week's premier of  “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” , IrishCentral is celebrating the movie’s Irish star, Evanna Lynch.

Lynch plays Luna “Looney” Lovegood in the epic “Potter” series.

The 17-year-old, a Termonfeckin, County Louth native, has been named a “standout” in the “Potter” films, and is a huge Harry Potter fan herself.

The young Irish actress’ father, Donal, brought her to an open audition in London in 2006 for “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix.” Lynch beat out over 15,000 girls to land the coveted role of Lovegood.

Diehard ‘Harry Potter’ fan

Lynch is such a huge fan of the original “Harry Potter” books that the casting directors almost had no choice but to pick her for the role.

As a child, the Irish actress often wrote to author J.K. Rowling, and in one letter wrote about how she’d love to act in a “Harry Potter” movie, but doubted this would happen because lived in this sleepy little place called Termonfeckin, where nothing ever happened.

Rowling wrote back: “Don’t be too hard on Termonfeckin; it does have a brilliant name! And I come from a very sleepy place.”

According to the Evanna Lynch fan site, when the novel “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” was published in 2003, the 11-year-old was in the hospital, and was devastated that she would miss the release, so much so that the hospital allowed her out for the morning and head to a local bookstore that arranged for her to receive a copy of the book autographed by Rowling.

Lynch arrived at the bookstore dressed in a Harry Potter t-shirt, donning painted-on black Harry Potter glasses, with “I love Harry Potter” scrawled on her arms and her nails painted blue with “Harry Potter” written on them.

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Nster.com