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Jim Broadbent will play Horace Slughorn in the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

The Oscar-winner confirmed his new role as the Hogwarts potion master to DarkHorizons.com.

In the interview, Broadbent called Slughorn “quite a comic character” and says he has had “endless costume fittings” of “[t]weedy sort of things with a bit of padding.”

Broadbent won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Iris” in 2002, and is best-known for roles in “Moulin Rouge” and the “Bridget Jones” films. He will also appear in the fourth Indiana Jones movie.

“Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth Harry Potter film, is set to begin filming shortly. It will hit theatres November 2008.

HARRY POTTER star DANIEL RADCLIFFE was once confronted by a female fan wearing just a towel in an American hotel – when he was 11 years old.

The 17-year-old admits he was unsure how to react at such a young age, but is now wishing more females would show their admiration in the same way.

He says, “I was about 11 when that happened. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was just discovering what everything was!

“That was really cool actually. I wish that would happen again. As I remember, she was very attractive. I’d be up for something now.”

(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.

HARRY POTTER author J.K. ROWLING was overcome with emotions as she finished writing the final book in the fantasy franchise, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

Rowling – who last week revealed the book, the seventh in the series, will be released on July 21 – admitted she felt an ‘incredible sense of achievement’ upon completion of the series, but couldn’t help feeling despair at the same time.

She says, “(I’ve) never felt such a mixture of extreme emotions in my life; never dreamed I could feel simultaneously heartbroken and euphoric.

“One thing has stopped me (from) collapsing in a puddle of misery on the floor. While each of the previous Potter books has strong claims on my affections, Deathly Hallows is my favourite, and that is the most wonderful way to finish the series.”

(c) 2007 WORLD ENTERTAINMENT NEWS NETWORK LTD. All global rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or re-distributing permitted.

The end is almost near for Harry Potter and the multi-billion dollar franchise created by J.K. Rowling.

“? I am working hard on something ? eagerly anticipated,” Rowling wrote on her web site.

“For 2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series. I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can’t wait to get started, to tell the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions (will I ever answer all of the questions? Let’s aim for most of the questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can’t quite imagine life without Harry.

“However (clears throat in stern British manner) this is no time to get maudlin.

“I have been fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan of seven during the past few weeks so that I can really set to work in January. Reading through the plan is like contemplating the map of an unknown country in which I will soon find myself. Sometimes, even at this stage, you can see trouble looming; nearly all of the six published books have had Chapters of Doom. The quintessential, never, I hope, to be beaten Chapter That Nearly Broke My Will To Go On was chapter nine, ‘Goblet of Fire’ (appropriately enough, ‘The Dark Mark’.)”

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire arrived in theatres with a bang, earning $101.4 million in its opening weekend, the best result yet for the movie franchise.

It is the fourth-best three-day opening weekend in history, behind only Spider Man ($114.8 million) and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Shrek 2 ($108 million apiece).

Goblet of Fire is the first Harry Potter film to earn a PG-13 rating, but this didn?t deter fans of the boy wizard from flocking to their local theatre.

?The Potter franchise is just irresistible to moviegoers,? says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. ?The combination of the Potter books and the love audiences have for the movies conspired a big opening weekend.?

Landing far behind in second place is the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, which took in $22.4 million.

The computer-animated Disney film Chicken Little dropped from top spot to third place this week, raking in $14.8 million. The Jennifer Aniston thriller Derailed earned $6.5 million and the sci-fi kids adventure Zathura rounded out the top five with $5.1 million.