Harry Potter Actress Jessie Cave Describes 'Uncomfortable Experience' on Set After Weight Gain

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Harry Potter actress Jessie Cave is opening up about her "uncomfortable experience."

Cave, who played Lavender Brown in the last three Harry Potter films, got candid during an interview with The Independent, telling the publication that her experience on set was different once she began gaining weight.

"I gained a lot of weight after doing Harry Potter [and the Half-Blood Prince], just because I wasn't starving myself," the 34-year-old told the publication. "And I was growing up and that's just what happens."

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Cave added that, when she returned to film the two Deathly Hallows films, she "was treated like a different species."

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"It was horrible. It was probably more me and my insecurity, knowing that I wasn't fitting into the same size jeans, but it wasn't a time where actresses were any bigger than a size eight [U.K.]," she recalled to The Independent. "And in the previous film I had been, and now I was a size 12. So that was horrible. It was a really uncomfortable experience."

Cave said that she "definitely felt invisible" after her weight gain, despite her previous success after filming her first Harry Potter movie.

"And since then, it's made me have weird issues with weight and work. And it's so f----- up, but it's just how it is. Women have to deal with that all the time," she explained.

Cave continued, "It's the most toxic relationship, acting. Unless you're doing well, you're only being rejected. It's like going on a million first dates, and them going brilliantly, and then you never hear from them again. It's like getting ghosted a thousand times a year and it kind of sends you crazy."

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"I definitely went crazy in my early 20s, thinking, 'But they said they liked me and that I was perfect for it?' But then you realise there's 100 other girls who are as good as you if not better, maybe prettier, maybe thinner, and they're perfect for it," she recalled.

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Since her Harry Potter days, Cave has focused less on acting. Instead she's turned her sights to comedy and writing. In some ways, Cave credits those body image struggles on set as a driving force that led her to her true passions.

"If I'd stayed thin – unnaturally thin, unhappily thin – I would have probably got more acting roles, and then I wouldn't have started writing. And then I don't know who I would be now because writing is who I am," she shared. "I'm almost grateful that I gained all that weight."