Evanna Lynch

Evanna Lynch is an Irish actor, activist, author and podcast host, best known for playing Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter films when she was 14 years old. Although many would associate Evanna with Hogwarts, in more recent years she has gained a lot of recognition for her work in the vegan movement. 

Evanna became vegetarian at the age of 11, for the animals, and transitioned to veganism in 2014. Three years later, she created the Chickpeeps podcast, “from an urge to ply long-term vegans and activists with questions, to share their collective wisdom with the world, and to cultivate a sense of community on an oft socially alienating path.” She also co-hosts the Just Beings podcast with Dr Melanie Joy. 

In 2021, Evanna published ‘The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: A Powerful Memoir of Overcoming an Eating Disorder’, which received excellent reviews. On Goodreads it has a score of 4.54 out of 5, and 97 per cent of Google users liked the book.

Obsessed, was the reply when I asked Evanna to describe her interest in Harry Potter before she was chosen to play Luna Lovegood. I’m not sure why this surprised me as millions of people are fanatical about J K Rowling’s mystical Hogwart’s world! Evanna explains: “My mum brought Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone home when i was eight.

My first reaction was, “I don’t want to read about a boy with glasses. Then I overheard mum reading it to my brother and I was hooked! My room turned black because of the Harry Potter posters that covered it and I had some cast autographs from writing fan letters, that’s how bad I was!” What an amazing story that a child so passionate about a series of books ends up playing a main role in the films. How did she get the part of Luma?

“I followed the Harry Potter fan site, Mugglenet, and saw the open audition announcement in January 2006 when I was 14. I queued for four hours, had no preparation and then they gave me a few lines to read for just a few minutes. That was it! One week later I was called for a screen test and three days later they told me I had the part. It all happened crazy fast!”

 “I reflect on this a lot,” she revealed, “but how do I tap into the mindset I had then because I just didn’t have any doubts. I feel there are some things in life that you’re just meant to do and the critical voices and self- doubt is silenced because your purpose is crystal clear.

“I guess it must have been something like your feelings when you investigate factory farms – you don’t want to be there, you don’t want to witness the suffering but your passion and love for animals means that those things are irrelevant. That’s what I felt like. I was a shy child but I loved the character of Luna, I connected with her and I had a sense of her spirit. I felt passionately about wanting to protect the integrity of her haracter because she had been such a helpful influence on me.”

I have the feeling that Evanna’s teenage years were troubled and probe further about how Luna shaped her life. She was open and clear:

“Luna was such an outsider – odd – and so she was bullied. What I loved about her was that she was weird but wore it lightly, not defiantly, and didn’t try to change herself. She was just perfect at ‘being’. I felt out of place, too, but I was hiding from it, self-critical rather than embracing who I am. The most beautiful thing about Luna’s character is that she was completely natural. No matter who she was with, she would never alter herself to please them. I loved that total self- possession and comfort in herself and I wanted that. I wanted to feel as weird and awkward as I was not bad about it.” but

Evanna’s portrayal of Luna is completely convincing and she’s received critical acclaim all over the world but the praise which must have topped it all was from J K Rowling herself. She gave a speech at the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011 and said there were seven major cast members in the series and she referred to them as The Big Seven. They included Evanna and JK Rowling revealed that it was Evanna who had the most influence on how her character was subsequently written. Later she said that when writing the final books: “I saw her. She got in my head. I even heard [Evanna’s] voice when I was writing Luna.”

“I started talking openly about bullying and eating disorders and people said it gave them comfort. It helped me too – just talking about my eating disorder distanced me from it. I was getting a sense of identity and purpose through what I could do for other people. I know that sounds wanky… it just made the picture bigger than me and that helped me heal”. Evanna is a petite, pretty, striking young woman with beautiful, big kind blue eyes – and she’s a picture of health. I wondered when and why she went vegan and how that shaped her attitude to food?

“I went vegan when I was 21” she tells me enthusiastically. “First I was vegetarian for 10 years. Eveti though my parents accepted me being veggie, every time I got a cold my mom would blame it on my diet! But a few months after I went vegan, I realised how much healthier I felt and even better for an actor – my acne cleared up!” So, was health the trigger for Evanna’s veganism? “No! It was an unexpected bonus! I became vegetarian and then vegan for the animals.

“I’ve always loathed violence and am highly sensitive to it. I have this small but sure voice deep inside me that says ‘no’ every time I witness violence and I don’t ever want to stifle that voice with apathy. “I was always a vegan in the making but it wasn’t nurtured so it took me a long while to make the connection. I went vegetarian because I was viscerally repelled by the idea of eating animals and didn’t want someone to kill them for me. But I was in cloud cuckoo land with dairy and ice-cream, believing cows were having a grand old time. I didn’t know that their calves were stolen from them. I read Eating Animals and then I understood that my vegetarian lifestyle was inconsistent with my beliefs so I decided to go vegan.”

To my delight she mentions that she saw me give my Why you don’t need dairy talk and this helped her vegan resolve: “Robbie and me went to see your talk in Bristol and loved it. You told us to ‘eat the rainbow’ and that’s what we’ve been trying to do. Viva!’s wall chart What I need each day for good health was on my fridge when I lived in LA for five years – and it’s still there! “I love Viva! and I’m so inspired by the undercover investigations you do – but I don’t think it’s something I could do – I would be crushed emotionally, I don’t have that toughness that you have. It’s brilliant that you do do it so we can show people, especially things that surprise people like your Happy Eggs investigations and now your Scary Dairy Face Off. It’s so helpful to have proof of what farming is really like. “The other thing I really like about Viva! is that you are the most approachable – which is why I like giving your stuff out to vegetarians and meat eaters. You don’t alienate people.”

It’s wonderful to see Evanna using her celebrity and passion for animal rights. She has more invitations ther she could ever accept and so has decided to focus on helping animals. I watched her deliver a speech to Trinity College’s Debating Society, using Luna as a way of bringing the audience closer to veganism. She is an excellent, natural public speaker – intelligent, engaging and funny.

“People love Harry Potter, they also love Luna. She’s a very kind, sweet, loving character and people want to be liked by Luna so if I’m talking about veganism I feel they’re a lot more open to it.” Evanna also uses social media (with over three million followers between Instagram and Facebook) to promote her favourite causes. And then there’s her weekly podcast series.

“I started Chickpeeps in November 2017 with Robbie Jarvis. I was very excited because I’m a big podcast fan and while there’s lots for experienced vegans there’s nothing for young people who love animals, who are possibly vegetarian or wanting to go that way but feel resistant or just don’t know enough. Every week we do a different topic and educate people bit by bit so they can go vegan gradually.”

I highly recommend the podcasts – guests vary from Ingrid Newkirk of Peta to Derek Sarno of Wicked ដា Healthy (and now me!). So who’s been Evanna’s favourite guest so far? Diplomatically she smiles and say: “I like the OG vegans like you.” (I had to look it up – I’m flattered (I think) to be referred to as an original gangster!).

I feel like the last words should be about Luna, the ‘anti-Hermione’ of Harry Potter. As Rowling has often said – Hermione is “inflexible and logical,” as opposed to Luna, “who could believe 10 impossible things before breakfast”. I can’t resist asking – is Luna a vegan?

“We did a whole episode on this (Podcast 934 at chickpeeps.com). I definitely think she’s vegetarian at the very least. She’s a naturalist and I think she’s vegan in her soul but you have to have a lot of passion and conviction to be vegan and Luna’s energy is very floaty. I think she’ll be vegan most of the time but if she’s at a wedding, say, and they don’t have a vegan option, she’ll eat vegetarian.”

I counter – Luna is floaty but she knows what’s right and doesn’t budge just because it’s inconvenient or she’s in a minority. Evanna beams her warm smile: “That’s true and she does have that real and soulful energy. I think her connection would be the spiritual side that everything has a soul and an energy and she wouldn’t want to eat animals who had been filled with suffering and terror. On that point, she would be vegan.”

I suggest that Evanna knows Luna more than almost anybody, apart from maybe one other person… “I really would love to but I don’t think I should ask J K Rowling because she might break my heart. If I found out she wasn’t even vegetarian I would be distraught but I think she is. Let’s say she’s vegan. I can say that. I can make that decision. She’s vegan to me!”