Frances de la Tour (Madame Maxime) has just been awarded a Tony award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (“The History Boys”). Stay tuned for more Harry Potter cast member news from the 60th annual Tony Awards! UPDATE: We have now added photos from the Tonys to our galleries! Check them out here. UPDATE …read more!

Heh. Or maybe the first. We’ve just announced a PotterCast avatar contest; we’ve witnessed you all create hundreds of awesome avatars and graphics since the show came out, so we thought we’d have a little fun with it. There will be to-be-announced prizes for the winners; in the meantime read all the rules at PotterCast.com …read more!

Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon) is profiled in today’s New York Times. The Tony-nominated actor talks about the challenges of being raised by two deaf parents, his character in “The History Boys,” his own physical problems, and his missed opportunity to play Oliver Hardy to Jonathan Pryce‘s Stan Laurel. Here is a snippet, in which Mr. …read more!

Leaky’s John and I will be at the Staten Island Chldren’s Museum’s Harry Potter celebrations tomorrow, giving out prizes and having fun; please stop by if you’re around! At 1:30 we’ll be conducting a Harry Potter discussion; there will be a maze on the East Meadow (in front of the museum), a championship Quidditch game, …read more!

The official website for the Tony Awards has a gallery of video clips of past and present nomineees. The clips include scenes from nominated performances and shows as well as backstage interviews. Of interest to Potter fans will be the interviews wih Jim Dale (narrator, U.S. audiobooks) and Frances de la Tour (Madame Maxime), and …read more!

During the hiatus from Order of the Phoenix filming, Alan Rickman will be keeping busy. He is attached to star in the film The Villa Golitsyn with Kristin Scott Thomas, which begins shooting in France this summer and is slated for a 2007 release. He will also bring “My Name is Rachel Corrie,” which he …read more!

Devon Murray (Seamus Finnigan) and Stanislav Ianevski (Viktor Krum) have been touring Japan, and have sent Leaky some pictures of their visit: Visiting Red Monkey in Shibuya, picking out their watches (the Red Monkey Watches are known as celebrity watches). In Fukushima, they visited girl’s school and experienced a tea ceremony. Playing the Koto, the …read more!

As we told you in March, The Book Magazine, a quarterly pulication launched this year, ran an online poll to select the greatest living British writers. J.K. Rowling tops the list, with three times the number of votes as the second-place author, Terry Pratchett. Others in the top 20 include A.S. Byatt, Salman Rushdie, Harold …read more!

Michael Gambon recently appeared on the British television show Top Gear, and sat down with presenter Jeremy Clarkson for a chatty and very funny interview in which he discussed cars, interviews, theater and film. You can see this interview in WMV and iPod-friendly format here, thanks to our reader Sarah, who sent it in: WMV …read more!

PotterCast 42 is now available! In this show: -It’s June, have ya voted yet? John singing “New York, New York” at Vegas (as promised on PotterCast.com depends on it). –New: From now on every week, on Mondays from 12 pm EST, the Corner Booth, Leaky’s text chat, will be open for a few hours to …read more!