Interview: Daniel Radcliffe

Jul 10 2009 The Journal

Kate Whiting talks to actor Daniel Radcliffe about Harry Potter, Coke, fame and what happens next

AN earnest young actor bursts into the room, grabs my hand in a shake and says: “Hi, I’m Daniel.” But he doesn’t need to make an introduction.

Daniel Radcliffe has one of the most recognised faces in the world thanks to a certain boy wizard named Harry Potter.

In fact, after seven years playing JK Rowling’s creation there can’t be many places where the 19-year-old isn’t known. “If I find that place, I may move there!” he jokes.

Dressed in a red shirt and jeans, Daniel’s clutching a can of Diet Coke and scanning the hotel suite in London with curiosity.

Either the caffeine’s taking effect, or he’s just naturally full of beans, because once he starts talking about something, the words just flow in a torrent of excitement.

He’s just finished filming the latest instalment of Harry Potter and his bouncy demeanour, insists he’s exhausted.

“If I wasn’t here, I’d be in bed probably now. I know it’s coming up to two o’clock in the afternoon, but that wouldn’t matter to me!

“I still do have a lot of energy, as you can probably tell, but for some reason, just before the end of a film, your body starts to let itself wind down. Diet Coke is a big help, although I did hear something rather disturbing about it recently,” he adds, heading off on a tangent.

“No, it was about full fat Coke – apparently highway patrolmen in certain states of America carry two litre bottles of Coke around with them to wash blood off the roads... but hell, it tastes good, so never mind!”

It’s this clear thirst for and love of knowledge that makes it so hard to distinguish Daniel from his on-screen alter ego. He admits curiosity is a quality he’s picked up from the wizard student.

“What’s great about Harry is he doesn’t take no for an answer, he doesn’t accept what people are saying, he always questions things and tries to go beyond what people are telling him and that is both the downfall and the salvation of his character,” he says.

“I think curiosity is a lovely quality to have and just a lust for knowledge’s sake. Also, what I think all kids have learnt from him is the value of friendship and how important friends can be to life.”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film in the series, once again pits Harry and his faithful sidekicks Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) against dark forces.

With the evil Voldemort on the rise, the students at Hogwarts have to be ever more vigilant about who is among them.

Returning teacher Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) provides Harry with valuable knowledge about his former pupil Tom Riddle.

There’s also romance in the air, as Ron gets a new girlfriend, making Hermione jealous, and Harry kisses Ron’s sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright) for the first time.

“It was weird, because I’ve known Bonnie since she was nine. It was weird, because when Katie Leung was brought in to play Cho (Harry’s first love), we all knew she was going to be the love interest, but with Bonnie as Ginny, she was just brought in to play Ron’s little sister, so it was kind of odd kissing her.”

But he claims he wasn’t nervous about it, partly because he’d been performing in a West End and Broadway production of radical Seventies play Equus, which involved getting his clothes off every night.

“I’d been naked on stage by that point, so there’s not much else to worry you,” he jokes.

He’s tight-lipped about his current off-screen romance, with Equus co-star Laura O’Toole, but seconds later is happily chatting away about his celebrity crush on Sophie Dahl.

“She was at the fifth film premiere and kissed me on the cheek. I turned round to her and said, ‘Thank you, because you’ve given me closure on my adolescent years’.”

For all the fame and money – he reportedly signed a contract worth more than £25m for the final Harry Potter films – Daniel’s an intellectual teenager.

During breaks from filming, he and Rupert play table tennis, or watch daytime TV and war movies. He writes poetry and stays in touch via letters.

"It’s a very old-fashioned thing to do, but I love it, because I know nowadays it’s a very special thing when someone gets a letter.”

He thinks his fame is “hilarious”, explaining: “I find it bizarre, because I meet people who I admire and respect and who I’m a fan of. I’m really nervous about meeting them, and then I think to myself, ‘God, this is how people feel when they meet me’, and that’s peculiar.”

He has hordes of screaming female fans all over the world, but insists they only fancy the red carpet version of himself. The me who sits in a darkened room for eight hours watching cricket and eating a big bowl of pasta in my socks and my underwear is not nearly as appealing to women!”

Daniel and his co-stars are a few months into a 19-month shoot for the seventh and eighth films. The final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has been split into two. While the cast lists still read like a Who’s Who of British acting talent, for the final instalment there’s no Michael Gambon, who plays Hogwarts head Albus Dumbledore.

Daniel admits it was emotional filming the final scene with Michael, as it was when Gary Oldman’s character died.

Considering the acting education he’s been given by working with stars such as Dame Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman – who reportedly cut a holiday short to help Daniel with his role in Equus on Broadway – it’s no surprise to hear the young actor has decided against continuing his studies at university, and will go into acting full-time.

In his first post-Potter role, he’s set to play photographer Dan Eldon, who was killed in Somalia, aged 22, in The Journey is ihe Destination – funding permitting.

“The greatest quality I think people can have as actors is their fearlessness and their willingness to try something even if they think they might fail, to try it anyway it’s that kind of fearlessness that I aspire to certainly.”

But does Daniel have any desire to play a bad guy for once? “I’m not sure how many baddies are five foot five, but still I’d like to play one very much indeed. If you meet any producers, tell them I have a wonderful evil stare!”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is released on Wednesday July 15.