As most Harry Potter fans know, July 31st isn’t just the birthday of the iconic character, but also the birthday of the author behind the hero: J.K. Rowling. Rowling will turn 51 this Sunday and we’re celebrating the occasion by rounding up some of the best interviews, speeches, and documentaries the notoriously private storyteller has done over the years on video.

For many fans (including this one), Rowling’s determination, imagination, and humanity is just as — if not more so — inspirational as the actions of her boy hero. We all know the famous story by now: Rowling began writing the first Harry Potter book while she was on welfare, raising her daughter in Edinburgh, Scotland. But the author’s commitment to family, fandom, and humanitarian causes (not to mention her epic Twitter account) in the years since she has risen to fame and fortune are also noteworthy.

Here are five of our absolute favorites interviews, speeches, and documentaries…

Harry Potter & Me (2001)

This TV documentary is a little dated with its recreations of Rowling writing Harry Potter on that fateful train from Manchester to London and its clips from the very first Harry Potter movie (the only one out at the time of this airing), but that same specificity makes it a perfect glimpse into a very specific time in Pottermania. The Rowling we see here is halfway through her writing of the Harry Potter franchise — well into the monumental success of the series, while also still very much focused on continuing the story in the way she imagined.

Starting at the 38-minute mark, we meet Sean Harris, Rowling’s teenagehood best friend on whom she drew much of the inspiration for Ron Weasley (including the famous Ford Anglia from Chamber of Secrets). Seeing them together tells you everything you need to know about how important it was to Rowling to have a Ron Weasley to depend on in her own life — if that wasn’t already obvious from Ron’s integral role in the books.

Much of the power of this interview comes in dramatic irony. At the 43-minute mark, she speaks about the darker direction the series has taken, teasing more deaths to come in the final three books, saying: “More people are going to die ... There’s at least one death that is going to be horrible to write — to rewrite, actually, because it’s already written — but it has to be.” R.I.P., Sirius Black.

J.K. Rowling: A Day in the Life (2007)

Come for the photos of J.K. Rowling’s terrible childhood haircuts, stay for pretty much everything about this fascinating TV documentary that gives fans insight into the year Rowling finished The Deathly Hallows. In the 47-minute special, director James Runcie follows Rowling’s life in the year that she finishes the final Harry Potter book. We see her type the final words, hand-deliver the manuscript to her agent in London, and bake a cake for her son’s fourth birthday. It feels intimate in a way that many Rowling interviews that take place in a TV studio are not.

For me, this documentary could have been twice as long. I would have gladly followed Rowling around for another hour or so, especially in this most-fascinating period of her life. Though we have heard the story of Rowling’s days writing early Potter many times, it is less common (at least for this fan) to find such raw, fascinating glimpses into Rowling’s life in her final days with Potter. It is particularly interesting to compare the Rowling of Harry Potter & Me with the Rowling of A Day in the Life. The latter is a bit more (understandingly) cynical about the fame thing, but also seems to have settled into her life a bit more, too.

A particularly affecting moment comes when Rowling visits the apartment she lived in when she was living on benefits, raising her baby daughter, and writing the first Harry Potter book. The segment begins around the 42-minute mark, and Rowling is moved to tears by the visit, saying: “Because it’s such a well-worn part of my story now, it’s a big yawn to hear how I wrote it as though it were all some sort of publicity stunt I did for a year, but it was my life and it was very hard and I didn’t know there was going to be this fairy tale resolution.”

At another point in the special (around the 30-minute mark), Rowling discusses whether or not she will continue on with the Harry Potter story. It is particularly interesting to watch given that we know she will use the family tree she is sketching out from memory for the story in this year’s The Cursed Child. Before putting the family tree on Pottermore, this segment provided much of the canon detail of what happens to the characters of the book post-Deathly Hallows. All of that could be another book?” “Yeah,” Rowling says before pausing in contemplation for a few moments. “No. Don’t. It can’t be. I think it’s time to stop now.”

Harvard Commencement Speech: “The Fringe Benefits of Failure” (2008)

Rowling’s 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech may be her most famous, and for good reason. In her 20-minute address, Rowling is eloquent, self-deprecatingly charming, and (unlike many commencement speech-givers) actually gives some good advice by espousing the benefits of failure to a group of kids about to head full-tilt into “the real world.”

Rowling’s address is highly quotable, with gems like: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” Or: “Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.”

Particularly powerful is Rowling recounting her time as an employee of Amnesty International in London, and how her experiences there would shape both her world view and some of the themes most integral to the Harry Potter story. Here is one of my favorite parts:

“Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do.”

In addition to being immortalized on YouTube, Rowling’s commencement address is also available in text form as a book: “Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination.”

Oprah & J.K. Rowling in Scotland (2010)

One of the best things about the interview Oprah Winfrey did with J.K. Rowling in 2010 is that these two women have so much in common. They are both self-made billionaires who have succeeded in spite of the many social obstacles set against them. This bleeds into their discussion and, as the interview goes on, it feels increasingly like a discussion rather than simply an interview.

Rowling asks Winfrey questions, too, and it is getting to see two women who are uniquely suited to understand one another in some ways have a relatively candid conversation about life, love, failure, success, fame and grief. At the beginning of the segment, Winfrey even calls it: “One of the most fascinating interviews I’ve ever done.”

For me, one of the most moving parts comes in Rowling’s discussion of how her mother’s death affected her writing. Though Rowling had already been writing Harry Potter for six months before her mother died, she never had a chance to tell her mother about the story and her mother obviously wasn’t around to see her daughter’s rise to success as an author, the only job she had ever wanted to do. In speaking about the role her mother’s death played in crafting Harry Potter, Rowling said...

“If she hadn’t died I don’t think it’s too strong to say there wouldn’t be Harry Potter. There wouldn’t – you know? The books are what they are because she died. Because I loved her and she died. That’s why they are what they are.”

Daniel Radcliffe Interviews J.K. Rowling (2011)

Whoever had the idea to pair up Daniel Radcliffe and J.K. Rowling for an interview deserves a Pulitzer because this interview is god damn priceless. It also makes you realize just how much this author and the actor chosen to play her most famous fictional character have in common. They are both thoughtful, introspective sorts who don’t seem overly-comfortable in the spotlight, but who are also too polite and/or humble to ruin any interview. They’re also both giant nerds.

The best part of this interview is observing the relationship between Rowling and Radcliffe who genuinely seem to like each other. Rowling has known Radcliffe since he was quite young, and that semi-parental pride shines through in her answers. At one point, she tells Radcliffe: “I don’t think I ever told you that I found [your audition tape] incredibly moving … At that point, I didn’t have a son, and I phoned David [Heyman] up and I said, ‘He’s great. He’s fantastic.’ And I did say to David it was like watching my son on screen.”

Unlike the other interviews mentioned in this article, this interview focuses a bit more on the Harry Potter films (for obvious reasons), but Radcliffe is obviously a mega-fan and is very interested in picking Rowling’s brain about what changed (at one point, she was going to kill Ron) and what didn’t (she always wanted Hagrid to carry Harry’s body out of the Forbidden Forest after Harry sacrificed himself) in the crafting of the series. There’s something really special about watching these two people who have a connection to the character of Harry like no one else discuss these stories, as well as hearing both Rowling and Radcliffe reminisce about this crazy, exciting journey.