She got the inspiration to create the character Hagrid after overhearing a muscular biker's concern about the poor condition of the petunias he was looking at.
When the first "Harry Potter" novel was published, the publisher asked her to use her initials instead of her name because boys would be prejudiced against a book written by a woman. Since she had only one first name, they asked her to invent another initial; she took the "K." from her favorite grandmother, Kathleen.
According to Forbes magazine (2006), she is the first author billionaire.
After spending six years writing the first installment of the "Harry Potter" novels, Rowling was rejected by nine publishers before Bloomsbury Publishing in London signed her.
The character names in her novels are often clues to their identities or secrets. For example, Professor Remus Lupin is a werewolf. According to legend, Romulus and Remus were the founders of Rome and were raised by wolves. The surname Lupin derives from lupus, Latin for wolf, and the English adjective lupine, meaning wolf-like. Lupin was turned into a werewolf by Fenrir Greyback, who takes his name from Fenrir, the monstrous wolf son of Loki in Norse mythology. (His nickname Fenrisulfr was the basis for Fenris Ulf, the American name of Maugrim in C. S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia.") Sirius Black, who transforms into a black dog, takes his name from the star Sirius, which can be found in the constellation Canis Major (the greater dog).
I finished writing the final novel of the fantasy series three weeks ago and celebrated the occasion by leaving graffiti in a hotel in Scotland. The sharp-eyed guests of the five-star Balmoral Hotel noticed a line written in black pen behind a marble bust in a room where Rowling had stayed, written by the best-selling author. "J. K. Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on January 11, 2007," she wrote.
She based Hermione on herself.
She claims that the first target audience for the "Harry Potter" novels was her daughter, to whom she would read parts of the story she wrote before bed.
On the day she signed the contract for the first "Harry Potter" novel, her publishing agent told her she would not be able to make money selling children's books.
In 2003, unauthorized Chinese "sequels" belonging to the "Harry Potter" series went on sale in the People's Republic of China. These poorly written novels by Chinese ghostwriters contained characters from the works of other authors, including Gandalf from J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and the title character of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz." Rowling's lawyers successfully took legal action against the publishers, who were forced to pay compensation.
She writes most of her novels by hand rather than on a computer.
She announced that she is considering writing another "Harry Potter" novel.
She created the character Gilderoy Lockhart inspired by someone she knew, and admitted that she actually had to soften his personality to make the character more believable.
To date (Summer 2011), she is the best-selling author in literary history. She is also the first author to become a billionaire by writing novels.
She was nearly barred from boarding a plane from the United States to the United Kingdom when airport security personnel demanded that her manuscript for the final book be scanned or placed in checked baggage. Rowling refused to part with the manuscript, which was bound with rubber bands.
The fifth novel of the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was published on June 21, 2003. It was about 896 pages long, contained 38 chapters and more than 255,000 words, making it the longest "Harry Potter" novel to date. The first US printing, at 8.5 million copies, was a record for an American publisher.
She is a big fan of Monty Python and claims that she incorporated some of its humor into her novels. Two explicit references to the "Monty Python" sketch "Crunchy Frog" can be found in the "Harry Potter" novels: two of the sweets are chocolate frogs and a cluster of cockroaches. "Monty Python" member John Cleese appears in the films.
While at the University of Exeter, she had very little money and wrote small personal stories for her friends for their birthdays.
She secretly published a crime novel, "The Cuckoo's Calling," under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith as a "first-time author," so that it would receive impartial reviews independent of her reputation as the author of the Harry Potter novels and "The Casual Vacancy."
She initially wrote the "Harry Potter" novels to pay her gas bills while living with her young daughter in a small apartment.
On July 7, 2004, she received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh for her outstanding contribution to the Potter books and children's literature.
She was No. 2 on the Forbes Celebrity List: Who Made the Bank? In 2006, she was the second-richest woman after Oprah Winfrey.
On July 27, 1993, she gave birth to her first child, her daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling-Arantes, at the age of 27. The child's father is her first husband, Jorge Arantes.
Stephen King reviewed most of her novels for the New York Times Review of Books.
Although the characters in "Harry Potter" carry traits of people she knows, she says the only character she deliberately based on someone she knew is Gilderoy Lockhart. She did not say who the character was based on, only that it was not her ex-husband, and that whoever it was, he was probably very ignorant and very narcissistic and probably claims either to be the basis for Albus Dumbledore or to be the real author of the "Harry Potter" novels.
The Harry Potter novels appealed to both children and adults. Her British hardcover publisher actually releases each of the novels with two different covers in order to appeal to both audiences. One features a realistic painting or photograph of an element of the story, designed to appeal to adults. The other has a comic-book-style illustration of a scene from the story, designed to appeal to children.
Her mother died of multiple sclerosis before she had the chance to enjoy the enormous success of her daughter Joanne's Harry Potter novels and films. In memory of her mother and the circumstances of her death, Joanne donated £10 million to the "Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic" at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
On 24 March 2003, she gave birth to her second child, David Gordon Rowling-Murray, at the age of 37. The child's father is her second husband, Neil Murray.
(11 November 2010) During a short interview in London's West End just before the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), she stated that among all the film adaptations of her novels, this one is her all-time and personal favourite.
It should come as no surprise that Stephen King is one of her biggest fans. Not only are both of them bestselling authors of supernatural stories, but both were also schoolteachers before becoming successful writers.
Severus Snape is believed to be based on John Lawrence Nettleship, a Chemistry teacher at Wyedean School in Gloucestershire. Rowling and her mother were his students.
For her services to literature, she was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours, and she received the honour from King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who is one of her fans.
Her novel "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" became the bestselling novel of the year 2000, with 7 million hardcover copies sold.
In 2002, a plagiarism lawsuit was filed against J. K. Rowling in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Pennsylvania-based author Nancy Stouffer, who claimed that Rowling had taken ideas from her 1984 novel "The Legend of Rah and Muggles", which features a character named Larry Potter. However, the case against J. K. Rowling was dismissed on 19 September 2002, after the judge ruled that Ms. Stouffer had lied to the court and altered evidence to support her claims.
As of November 2002, the month and year in which the second "Harry Potter" film (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002)) was released, the book series had sold more than 175,000,000 copies and been published in more than 200 languages, making it the biggest and fastest-selling novel to date.
On 23 January 2005, she gave birth to her third child, her daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling-Murray, at the age of 39. The child's father is her second husband, Neil Murray.
Her hero is Robert F. Kennedy. Like her hero, she currently lives in a castle.
She owns two properties in the Perthshire and Edinburgh regions of Scotland. In 2003, she hired a former SAS officer as a bodyguard to patrol her home in Perth and protect her family.
The 2009 Sunday Times List estimated her net worth at 817 million dollars.
In Time magazine's special double issue (31 December 2007), she ranked 3rd as "Person of the Year", after political leaders Vladimir Putin at #1 and Al Gore at #2.
Casting an actor to play Harry Potter was the greatest difficulty; they took part in 5000 auditions and none of them felt right. Director Chris Columbus saw Daniel Radcliffe in the film David Copperfield (1999) and showed it to the casting director, saying that Radcliffe was the one and that he was magnificent. However, he said they could not get him because his parents wanted him to focus on his schoolwork rather than acting and did not want him to receive attention. So they interviewed Harry Potters of different nationalities from all over the world and still could not find him. Columbus was annoyed because Columbus had set his heart on Radcliffe. By complete coincidence, the producer and screenwriter of Philosopher's Stone went to the theatre and Radcliffe was there in the front row with his father, so they talked and gradually persuaded him to cast Radcliffe.
She is one of two contemporary authors to have a novel on the New York Times bestseller list in both hardcover and paperback for more than a year; the other author is Nicholas Sparks.
She is a big fan of the rock band The Smiths and appeared in the 2003 Channel Four documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey (2002).
One of her favourite films is The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), written and directed by "Harry Potter" screenwriter Steve Kloves.
On 3 April 2003, she and Time Warner successfully sued the Dutch publishing company Byblos in the Amsterdam Supreme Court. This prevented Byblos from publishing Russian author Dmitry Yemets's novel "The Magic Double Bass", which features the girl wizard Tanya Grotter. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was found to have been plagiarised and its copyright infringed.
In 2008, she ranked 14th on The Telegraph's list of "the 100 most powerful people in British culture."
On 21 December 2006, she announced that the title of the final "Harry Potter" novel would be "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
She is a former English teacher.
Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves worked on the adaptations of the Harry Potter novels; they collaborated on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011). Their collaboration was so productive that their next project became The Stand (2020). This film is adapted from the novel by Stephen King, one of Rowling's biggest American fans.
Forbes magazine estimated her earnings that year at 32 million dollars (2007).
With earnings of £560 million, Rowling ranked 148th among the 1,000 richest people in the United Kingdom in The Sunday Times "Rich List" annual magazine supplement (2012).
In 2008, she ranked 9th on the Forbes The Celebrity 100 list.
She has stated that her surname is pronounced to rhyme with "Bowling," not "Howling," and it is therefore pronounced "Rolling."
In her youth, after earning a degree from the University of Exeter, she became fluent in French, studied in Paris for a year as part of her time at university, and worked in London as a researcher and bilingual secretary.
The film Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) has many similarities to Rowling's Harry Potter series; the young Watson resembles Harry Potter; school experiments; Holmes has a rivalry with another student; Dudley closely resembles Harry's rivalry with Draco Malfoy; Dudley and Malfoy both come from wealthy parents; vast libraries, sweets; train stations; the novelization of Holmes uses the word chamber pot/Potter; students who are injured and need to see the school nurse; teachers and students eating in the Great Hall; Holmes and Watson solve mysteries while at school, and Harry, Ron and Hermione do the same at Hogwarts; staircases; Harry/Holmes and Watson sneaking through a school library at night; both Watson and Hagrid say "sorry about that"; the end of the school term; the threat of expulsion; Harry has no family he can return to even at Christmas; Harry has a scar on his forehead while Holmes has a scar on his cheek; seemingly innocent faculty members turn out to be the exact opposite; head boys, etc.
Her novel "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is known in the United States as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."
In Edinburgh, Scotland, she was awarded the CH (Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour) in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to Literature and Philanthropy.
She graduated from the University of Exeter.
When Chris Columbus wrote the screenplay for Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), Watson believed that Holmes was obsessed with a case even at Christmas because, unlike other children his age, he had no family to go home to, like Harry Potter and Kevin McCallister, and Columbus had ties to the Harry Potter and Home Alone series.
I was born at 21:10 (GDT).
In an interview, it was claimed that writing the final Harry Potter book differently would have required two more books.
Although she generally appears blonde today, photographs of J. K. Rowling as a young girl (2015) show that she was dark-haired in her youth.
In June 2022, during a Zoom call, Rowling spent 12 minutes praising someone she believed to be Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky; she was unaware that the person was actually the Russian prankster duo Vovan and Lexus, both supporters of Vladimir Putin.
She lives in Edinburgh.
She has a tattoo on her writing wrist of the Baphomet prayer "Solve et Coagula."