Harry Potter star and the vanishing £1 million

HARRY PotteR star Daniel Radcliffe seems to be losing his financial wizardry. I hear the actor (pictured), who has held viewers spellbound since being cast in Harry Potter And the Philosopher’s Stone at the age of 12, made a loss of almost £1 million in the business he uses to channel his on-screen earnings.

the £ 952,175 plunge is buried in accounts published on Christmas eve for Gilmore Jacobs Ltd, reported in ‘distributable profit and loss reserves’. It’s a huge turnaround for Radcliffe, 31, as his company made a £4.2 million profit the previous year.

Happily, he will have no problem shouldering the loss as the company remained £79.7 million in the black as at March 31.

the actor’s parents set the business up for him in 2000 — the year before he first hit the screens as J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard. Its most profitable year was 2012, in which a £16.7 million profit was generated. this year its assets included £8.6 million in cash, plus £ 53 million worth of investments, monies owed to it at £17.8 million, as well as investment property at £3.1 million. Radcliffe’s father, Alan, forsook his own career as a literary agent to nurture his son’s acting. His mother, Marcia, is a casting agent. they are the only directors of the company, but have always made it plain that the money it generates — from investments and Daniel’s stellar career — is for him alone.

Radcliffe now spends much of his time in New York with girlfriend erin Darke, 36, whom he met when they starred together in the 2013 drama Kill Your Darlings.

But he betrays no sign of succumbing to delusions of film- star grandeur, emphasising instead that his fortune gives him what other actors can only dream of — artistic freedom. ‘ I would like to start directing in my 30s,’ he has said, ‘and try to get at least one film made before I turn 40.’

He still has the fortune to produce it, too. Radcliffe’s spokesman declines to comment.