Daniel Radcliffe
We hole up in a spooky house to shoot Harry Potter and shoot the sh*t.
‘when i first met maggie smith, i was nine and i didn’t know who she was. i was gloriously unintimidated’
Ijust don’t want to be an arsehole,” says Daniel Radcliffe. “I don’t know how else to explain it other than you see people who are arseholes, and you go, ‘I don’t want to be like that.’”
Radcliffe is pondering his reputation as one of the nicest guys in movies. Sitting in a hotel suite in Soho, London, he’s dressed down in a striped t-shirt, blue jeans, trainers and ankle socks, his confessed tiredness camouflaged by some artfully applied makeup and a goofy grin. It’s July. Tomorrow he’ll be jetting off to Comic-Con in San Diego to promote gothic-horror Victor Frankenstein, and until a few days ago he was residing in New York to be with his girlfriend Erin Darke while she appeared in off-Broadway production The Spoils opposite Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote as well as starred. For now, though, he’s enjoying being back in Blighty (“I’m watching Pointless and Come Dine With Me – all those important things about England”).
Anyway, back to not being an arsehole. Or, indeed, any other parts of the anatomy...
“The actors who are dicks… I do not know how they enjoy their job,” he continues. “Because if you step on set and the crew hates you, you must feel bad. I remember talking to somebody who looks after a very big actor. They were telling me these horror stories. I was like, ‘At what point, in all this, does he have fun?’ She said, ‘Honestly, it’s the moment he gets out on the red carpet and waves and everyone chants and cheers.’ I was like, ‘That’s the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.’”
His laugh echoes around the room. “Having to do red carpets gives me anxiety. It’s the most unnatural part of acting. The most natural part is being on set.” So he’s not the slightest bit jaded now that he has eight
Harry Potter movies and numerous other projects under his belt? “Not at all. I got to work with Michael Caine earlier in the year in Now You See Me 2. He’s 81 and he’s not jaded. Also, I worked with Bill Paxton on [ BBC movie]
The Gamechangers. God knows how many fucking films he’s done. He still just loves it.
That’s what I want to be. The worst day on set is still the best day for most other jobs.”
This last was true, he insists, even on the UK sets of Victor Frankenstein, an askew riff on Mary Shelley’s classic novel that’s stitched together from the literary source, various movie adaptations and screenwriter Max Landis’ imagination as he posits an origin story for the eponymous scientist ( James McAvoy) and his hunchbacked buddy Igor (Radcliffe). The weather was appalling, the action physical, the prosthetic effects gooey. But the 26-year-old actor loved every second of it, fuelled by the belief that director Paul McGuigan was offering a fresh, invigorating take. Attached since 2011, before McGuigan and then McAvoy came on board, Radcliffe witnessed the script evolve.
“My problem with the script, as it had been before, was that it was a little bit… and this isn’t a criticism of Max because it’s just something that some American writers do… they write English bad guys without having an edge; they sound a little verbose and moustache-twirly. As soon as I met Paul, I was like, ‘OK, he’s going to give it some grit and make it feel like it’s [ set] in a really scary world.’”
Key to this gritty, scary world is the shifting relationship between Frankenstein and Igor. Here, it’s not as simple as master and minion or brainbox and birdbrain. And while the term ‘bromance’ has been bandied around – a description that makes Radcliffe roll his eyes theatrically – their affiliation is perhaps better characterised as co-dependent.
“There’s an imbalance and that is the cause of a lot of the tension,” nods Radcliffe. “It comes from the fact that at the beginning
of the film, he essentially rescues me [ from
a circus] and changes my life forever. So from the word go, I am indebted to him in his mind and in my own mind. As he starts going crazier and crazier, he begins doing things that I cannot endorse anymore, but I don’t have the guts to stand up to him. That creates an unhappiness within me that eventually spills over into our relationship.” Another big laugh ricochets off the walls. “It’s an incredibly dysfunctional relationship.”
There is, of course, no yin without yang, and Radcliffe was both delighted and terrified when McGuigan suggested that McAvoy should be their Frankenstein. “When Paul said, ‘I’m going to go and talk to James about playing Victor’ I was like, ‘Yes! Go talk to James! Fuck’s sake, what are you even doing here? Go!’” he grins, then offers passionate assurances that McGuigan’s casting proved to be inspired: “What he brings to the character is phenomenal. He’s fucking extraordinary in it.”
But, rather sweetly given he’s a global star who’s worked with the likes of Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman and Pierce Brosnan, Radcliffe admits to being terrified at the thought of acting opposite the talented Scot. “I was much more in awe of James than I was, initially, with a lot of the senior actors on Potter,” he insists. “When I first met Maggie Smith, I was nine and I did not know who Maggie Smith was! I had not seen The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. I was gloriously unintimidated by all of those people.” He takes a breath. “But when I met James, I’d grown up watching The Last King Of
Scotland. Inside I’m Dancing was a huge fucking film to me, and I remember being obsessed with Atonement. Suddenly you’re working with him. That was very intimidating.”
Thankfully the two got on famously and threw themselves, literally, into the scenes. If they weren’t covered in mud they were knee-deep in blood as Frankenstein seeks to create monstrous life. Radcliffe doesn’t want to give too much away but discloses that there is more than one creature in the movie.
He grins at TF. “There’s a prototype monster that I particularly love. It’s a hybrid of several creatures. Its name is Gordon and it’s really fucking cool.”
Born in Fulham on 23 July 1989 to literary agent Alan Radcliffe and casting agent Marcia Gresham, Daniel Jacob Radcliffe acted in school plays and landed his first TV gig as ‘Young David’ in BBC’s mini-series David Copperfield (1999). His first film role came playing the son of Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis in John Boorman’s elegant adaptation of John le Carré’s spy thriller The Tailor Of Panama (2001), but it was his casting as the bespectacled boy wizard in Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone (also 2001) that changed everything. Watched
over by fretful parents who didn’t want to lose their son to the filming of endless sequels, Radcliffe initially only committed to two movies, but HP1’ s worldwide box office of $974,755,371 sealed his future. Seven supersized sequels followed over the next 10 years, with the world and its dog watching little Dan grow up on screen.
Initially rather stiff but getting by on innate likeability and a winning grin, Radcliffe could also be seen growing into his craft, with his performances improving sequel by sequel until it began to look like he might have the tools to fashion a career beyond the mighty walls of Hogwarts. He prepared cleverly for just such a graduation, appearing in the West End revival of Peter Shaffer’s
Equus in 2007 (critics raved, once they’d finished writing about Harry Potter doing full frontal nudity – cue ‘wand’ gags aplenty) and a Broadway revival of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying in 2011. When the time finally came to fly the
Potter nest, he soared: the scares worked in Hammer’s gothic smash The Woman In Black because viewers cared for Radcliffe’s young lawyer Arthur Kipps, and his rendition of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was electric in indie pic Kill Your Darlings. Less successful were romantic-drama What If with Zoe Kazan, and horror-fantasy Horns, based on the novel by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill and directed by Alexandre Aja ( Switchblade
Romance, Piranha 3D). Even so, they were smart, eclectic choices, feeding into an interesting body of work that looks to utilise his star persona in engaging ways.
Radcliffe’s on his way, but at 26 his journey has only just begun.
“I’ve definitely got my list of directors I want to work with,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. “Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Chris Nolan… But I’m not fixated on that either. There’s also something incredibly exciting to me about working with people who are the next one of those guys, and I absolutely think John Krokidas, who directed Kill Your Darlings, is going to make great, great films. The guys I’m about to work with [ on Swiss Army Man] are something else. They’re called the Daniels [ Dan Kwan and
Daniel Scheinert]. They come from the music world and directed the video for [ DJ Snake’s] ‘Turn Down For What’. They made a short film called Interesting Ball, which I recommend. They’re amazing. Working with them is like buying shares in Microsoft, back in the day.” A more brand-recognition title is Now
You See Me 2, which Radcliffe has wrapped. The first movie saw an FBI agent and Interpol detective (Mark Ruffalo, Melanie Laurent) track a team of illusionists ( Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco) who pulled off real bank heists during their stage act. There is, then, something deliciously cheeky about plunging the former Harry Potter into a very different world of magic. Radcliffe had his own reasons for signing up.
“I’d seen the first film, enjoyed it, and thoroughly enjoyed the cast,” he shrugs. “It was really fun to do a big movie like that, and to do a supporting part in something; I’d been looking for something where I could just be part of an ensemble, have that experience. There were so many people I really respected
‘i’m fascinated to know what the plot of Fantastic beasts will be’
and looked up to in it. To have scenes with Michael Caine and Mark Ruffalo was amazing.” It’s no good asking him about the plot, mind, or just how his character fits into the dynamic. “I don’t really want to say,” he smiles. “I feel I should keep that [ quiet] because there’s a bit of a reveal. So yeah, I’ll keep schtum on that.”
You might expect him to also keep schtum when asked about Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, but let’s not forget he’s a media-savvy, affable chap, and the last thing he wants to do is give a frustratingly tight-lipped interview. Based on J.K. Rowling’s slimline 2001 book, which arrived on shelves credited to Newt Scamander and purporting to be the textbook that Harry studied in Philosoper’s Stone, it contains the history of Magizoology and details 85 magical species that Scamander observed during his travels across five continents. The film – the first of a planned trilogy – will be set 70 years before the
Harry Potter franchise and will focus on the adventures of Newt (Eddie Redmayne) within New York’s secret community of witches and wizards.
“Erm, it intrigues me more than anything,” he offers when asked if he finds the idea of more exploits within an extended
Potter universe a thrilling prospect. “I think I am also fascinated to know what the story is going to be. I loved that little bestiary book that came out, but it’s teeny tiny. And it’s going to be a big film.”
Fair point. So might a cameo from a certain zigzag-scarred wizard be part of that fleshing-out process, perhaps in a flashforward? “Don’t ask me about that!” he laughs, offering a spark of hope to fans around the world. And then it’s snuffed… “I’m sure it will be a little weird because it’s Harry
Potter stuff going on without me. I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be nice. Maybe it’ll be good. Maybe Eddie becoming the face of the franchise will mean he gets the questions now!” Another hearty guffaw. “It might take some of the pressure off. But yeah, I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m very intrigued. I’m also intrigued by the play that’s been announced [Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, a twopart story co-written by J.K. Rowling and due
to open summer 2016]. I saw that online the other day. I was like, ‘OK, wow.’ It was a very funny press release because it said several times that it was not a prequel, but it went on to say that it was about Harry’s parents and took place in the years just before Harry’s birth. I think we’re redefining prequel if we’re saying that’s not a prequel!”
With so many mysteries and possibilities swirling, one thing’s for sure: just as Radcliffe will continue to spread his wings to seek a career that is long and varied, the Potter universe will expand also, with or without him.
“It is weird seeing it carry on in a way, but Potter is bigger than any one person,” he says. “And the one thing that is very much apparent is there’s still a huge hunger for it. I meet people all the time who say, ‘Are you going to do any more?’ I’m like, ‘You know there’s only seven books? We did them all!’” The laugh fills the room for a final time. “But people are very much up for more, so they will be satisfied.”