Forget Boy Wizard, what's it like being simply the most famous boy in the world?
Forget Boy Wizard, what's it like being simply the most famous boy in the world?
If Goblet Of Fire was the onset-of-puberty film and Order Of The Phoenix was the discovering-girls film, then where would you say Half-Blood Prince fits?
Well, (producer) David's (Heyman) been saying this is the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll one. There's obviously no sex in the book; it's all subtext. There is a fair amount of sexual energy in the book and there are some drug parallels. We have a couple of what David calls "our Trainspotting moments"... Those are two films I never thought would be mentioned in the same breath! But there's one moment, who knows if it will stay in the film, where we're discussing the Felix Felicis potion, which gives you perfect luck, and I say to Dumbledore, "Have you ever taken Felix Felicis?" and he says, "Only recreationally." So it's a bit more playful and acknowledging of these kids being teenagers. I think that to be in any way competitive, we have to have something for adults.
So do you feel the films are growing more adult with the audience?
Actually, there's more comedy and romance in this, a bit of high school movie stuff. It's all crushes and who fancies who. Actually, that sounds a bit twee, but it's not.
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The book contains arguably the most emotional moment of the entire series: the death of Dumbledore. Was that the most difficult to film?
I always viewed Sirius' death as a bigger thing. I suppose most people would think of Dumbledore's death as bigger, but I always believed that the loss of Sirius meant more to Harry. Also, the problem was that the fourth, fifth and sixth films all end with the death of a fairly major character, so it's part of my job to make sure they're not the same. So where the death of Sirius was lots of crying and screaming, I wanted this to be just numb shock, something that you can't take in. I want to say a stillness, but that's too poncey a word. I just didn't want it to be repetitive and for the last scene of each film just to be a shot of me screaming that's not nice for anyone. Of course, it'll be nice in the last film when it'll be everyone else having to do all the crying when I die. As an actor, the ending of the books could not be more perfect. I get to have a big death scene and then get more screen time! It's glorious.
What are your feelings about the series coming to an end?
It's mixed emotions. It will be very, very odd to not be coming back to Potter. It's sort of a safety net to come back to when you go off and do an Equus or My Boy Jack. Knowing that's not there will be sad. The saddest aspect will be leaving the character behind and not seeing the friends I've made on a daily basis... It only hit me when we finished the sixth one. I'd been so focused on the sixth and then suddenly thought, "Oh God, there's only one left, what the hell am I going to do?" I just want to keep working afterwards, and I think I will. I hope people now know that I'm taking it seriously and I'm not just a dosser who's in it for the money! It's going to be very hard to leave it all behind, mainly because of the people. Everyone always assumes that my best friends are in the cast, but although I get on with the cast really well, particularly Matthew Lewis (Neville) and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), my best friends are all in the crew.
Isn't your dresser, Will, your best friend?
Yes, well remembered. We've been married for eight years now and some days it does come quite close to divorce. But he's my best friend and I love him. That's why this job is so incredible I get to go to work and hang out with my best friend. It's a brilliant job. No matter what people tell you about how hard it is and all the emotional pain that you put yourself through. Yeah, fine, do all that, but, at the end of the day, if you didn't like doing it then you wouldn't. It's very rare that somebody's only good at acting, I think. Most actors have probably got something else that they're a lot better at. Like Michael Gambon. He restores guns.
Really?
Sorry, he'll kill me for saying that. He restores pistols there's a difference, apparently. He restores 17th and 18th century pistols. He was an engineer and used to make guns. So, everyone has these other things that they enjoy and are good at. If you didn't enjoy acting you wouldn't do it, you'd find another way of being creative. I think that people who do all the Method stuff and put themselves through all sorts of pain, that's great, and if they get a great performance out of it then that's fantastic. But I don't like them being preachy about it and saying everyone has to do it. You don't. Hang on, I've gone off at a tangent here in short, I love Potter and I will miss it, but I want to carry on working as often as I can. I'd like to carry on working with Will, but ultimately we've both got different jobs and he's got two kids, so it's not likely to happen. The other thing that will be strange is not having that comfort zone. I can go off and do Equus or My Boy Jack, but I've always known that I could go back to familiar surroundings.
Is there one person you can single out as the most important person you've met because of the films?
Gary Oldman. Definitely Gary Oldman, he's great. Other people would be Imelda Staunton and David Yates.
They've all been very inspirational to me. But I have to single Gary out because of his focus and desire and just the ease with which he acts. He can just do it. I think it bores him slightly how easily it comes to him. I think he and Daniel Day-Lewis are the best actors of their generation.
In the past couple of years, you, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson have all tried different things: Emma did Ballet Shoes, Rupert had Thunderpants and Driving Lessons and you were on stage with Equus and on TV with My Boy Jack. How important do you think that is for the films?
I think it's really helped. It's a confidence thing, and getting the peace of mind that you can do something else and have it be well received. It just means that people are starting to think of us as actors, not just these characters. I think that if we'd done nothing but Potter, we'd all be a bit down on ourselves. You don't want to be one of those actors who gets stuck as one character for their entire career, which would be entirely possible. I think we all want to make a proper go of it as actors and we're all willing to work for it I know I am.
If we'd left it until the end of Potter and then gone on to try other things I think it would have been harder for people to take.
Equus was very significant in that way. How calculated was the decision to make something so different? Were you deliberately trying something risky to make people see you as a grown-up?
It actually never felt like a risk at all. Ken Branagh had always been very good to me since the second Harry Potter film. He'd always been asking me if I was around for other things, getting me into The Play What I Wrote and other things. He was the one who originally suggested doing Equus. Then it was about two years later that I actually started rehearsals. It really never felt like a risk. It was always just a good play, not a thought of, "Oh, I've got to do something different and shocking." Good parts for 17-year-olds on stage are few and far between particularly that good. Obviously, it is very different from Harry and I did want to do something that would make people see me differently, but I wasn't looking to do something shocking. Naively, I didn't expect people to be that up in arms about it.
'I'll never be in any other film that does better than Bond'
Really? Even given the nudity, which is what most papers picked up on and which featured in all the promotional material?
But because I'd read it, it wasn't that shocking. The thing that shocked me was that he blinds six horses. Nobody ever seemed to mention that when talking about the play. It was all, "He's naked on stage, that's terrible"; "He's smoking on stage, how awful." The RSPCA never rang up saying I was setting a bad example to stable boys! The double-standards were obscene. I certainly didn't picture it kicking off in the way it did. But you know what? I'm really glad it did. They're just idiots, these people.
Things in the Daily Mail where they pretend someone has written in maybe they did write in, I can't prove otherwise but they say, "I'm a concerned mother..." Well, leave your name then. They're always anonymous, these people, which I find somewhat suspicious, all these mothers who don't want their names getting out. This is a strange room, isn't it?
Yes, it's sort of like a branch of Laura Ashley in the medieval ages.
It is! What's with all these weird paintings of fruit and African knick-knacks? It looks like occupational therapy. I hate it when people have bits of ethnic statuary and stuff in their houses. It's so pretentious. Yes, okay, you've travelled and you're multicultural. What's this obsession that some of the richest people in the country have with wanting to show some connection to some of the poorest parts of the world?
Coming back to Potter, you don't seem to mind the whole fame aspect, even though you're one of the most recognisable faces in the world.
To be honest, if that's what I was interested in then the fame thing might concern me more, because sometimes it bites you on the a*se. But the bit I like is making the films and meeting fantastic people and being part of the atmosphere, so the fame thing is just... Also, the thing you have to bear in mind is that it takes ten months of the year to make a Potter film. So that's ten months when I'm in a studio in Leavesden, near Watford, spending hours making a film and then going home. So I haven't got time to go out and be seen anywhere because I'm working and then going home.
But do you get bothered when you do get the chance to go out?
Someone asked me the other day how I manage not to be recognised. I don't get that. I don't understand how people get recognised and turn up in Heat magazine as often as they do. They must call up and tell them, otherwise I don't get it. I've had so few problems with paparazzi. I've probably had four incidents in all this time. If they don't know where you are then they're not there...
What do you do when you do get down time? Are you a cinemagoer?
Yes, I am. I always try to go in either very early or after everyone's gone in and it's dark. If I go in early and keep my hat down, it's not really a problem. The one time I was quite worried was when I went in to see a film and Johnny Vaughn had gone in five minutes before me. The guy doing the tickets then got over-excited, or was being a bit of a pr*ck, I don't know, and was just telling everyone, "Johnny Vaughn's in Screen Ten!
Johnny Vaughn's in Screen Ten!" I was just thinking, "If you recognise me that could be really bad." One other time I went to this cinema on Fulham Broadway and stood still for a couple of minutes. Then a boy noticed me and shouted, "Oh, it's Harry Potter!" And then about 20 or 30 people were crowded round me. Thankfully, I was going to see Hotel Rwanda and they were off to Rush Hour 3. But I don't get annoyed by people coming up to me. It's nice. It's quite refreshing to live in London and have contact with strangers.
Exclusive: scenes from the next HP films, in which Bellatrix kills Dobby The burial of Dobby The three friends take refuge from Lord Voldemort in a lonely cottage in the countryside. The scene above shows Helena Bonham-Carter (who plays Bellatrix Lestrange) attacking the friends and killing the house-elf Dobby. Below, Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) bury their friendu00a0Pics/ Rex Features
So what are the early Potter memories?
Well, I first started signing autographs on set clearly these were bright people who knew they might be worth something if the films took off! So I was signing Daniel Radcliffe, and I remember David Heyman saying to me, "You might want to shorten that to DJR," which are my initials. I was adamant that I would always sign my full name. In retrospect, I wish I'd taken his advice. It takes ages to write your full name over and over. The first films were really good fun. Chris Columbus was so good at keeping us upbeat and energised.
How do you feel about the fact that Potter will likely be the biggest thing you ever do and you'll barely be in your twenties by the time it's over?
I'm sure it will be. I'm certain I'll never be in any other film that does better than Bond.
So you're taking the opposite path to most actors. You're starting with the enormous blockbuster that brings you fame and riches and then forging a career in smaller films...
But I don't want to do stuff that will necessarily be big; I just want to do stuff that's going to be good. It doesn't matter if... in a way, I think maybe some actors have a fixation with being in blockbusters. But, having done that, it's nice to think that I can now be a bit selective. Various papers have guessed at various figures of wages over the years, but the proper good fortune that I've come into is that the money gives me room to manoeuvre. I don't have to do something unless I think it's good, which is an amazing privilege for an actor and one I hope to capitalise on.
Do you know how much you're worth?
I actually don't. I'm not that... I don't... I'm very grateful for it, but I just don't want to become too involved in it. I'm not a particularly money-oriented person because I've got it, probably. But I don't like lots of flash spending and stuff like that. I do want to buy a nice car.
Isn't that the first thing you do when you get a big paycheque?
Well, I can't drive. Never had a lesson. I want a Golf GTI. I think they're good cars. Do you drive? How old are you?
I'm 29 and I've also never had a lesson.
Oh good, that's a comfort. I thought I was the only person over 17 who couldn't drive. But if I do this Dan Eldon movie (The Journey Is The Destination, about a photo-journalist who was killed in Somalia) then I'll have to learn. There's a lot of jeep action in that, so I can't really not drive.
That's right in the deep end.
Yes, there's lots of driving over rough terrain in Africa. At one point we were supposed to be shooting in Kenya, but then it broke out in civil war, so I'm not sure that will happen. I don't want to do that horrible Black Hawk Down thing of filming in one part of Africa and then casting actors from a completely different area and doing that awful, "Oh, they all look the same, no-one will notice the difference." It's this form of very subtle racism that seems to happen sometimes and it's horrible. So, I'd hope we can get extras who are Somalian, rather than from South Africa or Zimbabwe, for example.
Have you had thoughts of what you'd like to do long term, within acting?
I definitely want to go back on stage and do something different again, because by that point there'll be more parts around, when I'm 21, 22. The great fortune that's befallen me so far is that I'm always about the age of the people I play. I was 17 when I played Alan (Strang, in Equus). I was the same age as Jack Kipling, almost to the day. Hopefully when I play Dan Eldon I'll be close to his age (he was killed at 22) hopefully. The person I really hate, because he's a really good actor and stole the one part I would love to have played, but was too young for and would be until about 25, is Ben Whishaw. He's played John Keats (in Jane Campion's Bright Star, out in late 2009), who I'd have loved to play. I'm obsessed with poetry and have been obsessed with Keats for years. But I really think there's nobody better than Ben Whishaw to play him, because he's amazing. Still, there's always Shelley. Matthew Rhys has done Dylan Thomas. A few people have played Byron. Wordsworth and Coleridge: not so interested in. They got old and right-wing and wrote things like a sonnet on the advocation of the death penalty. I like the second-generation romantics they were like rock stars. They died young and cool.
You'd make a lovely Pam Ayres.
Yes, Pam Ayres. That's the one I'll go for.
Who do you credit with the fact that none of you Potter kids have gone completely off the rails?
It's partly that the films feel like a family and partly that we've all got great parents. It's also because Leavesden is a very safe environment where we spend most of our time. The other thing is that we're not American. If you grow up as a child star in America, it's veeeery different. Over there you're a star first and a child second, whereas in England it's the other way round. If you get too big for your boots in England then someone will talk to you. They won't in America or that's the impression I've had from talking to people who work on these things. That's the main difference. If you're told how important you are from a young age then you become arrogant and rude.
Also, we have Vanessa (Davies, Unit Publicist on all the Harry Potter films) who looks after us all. She's great and she's good at letting me come to things like this on my own and get on with it. I don't want people writing those things and I'm sure you wouldn't commenting on "Daniel Radcliffe with publicist in the room". I quite enjoy interviews. I like doing things like this where we can sit down and have a bit of a chat and sit in a room full of potpourri and paintings that look like they've been done by people getting over a bit of a breakdown.
Have you become wary of the press?
Oh, I always have my guard up. You learn to pick up trigger words that indicate that someone's going somewhere with something and it's somewhere you won't like. Basically, trying to dig dirt on other cast members. So people will say, "Do you all get on?" rather than, "You, Rupert and Emma all seem to get on very well, so what's the relationship?" There was a pretty well-known American TV journalist who did some interviews and what she would do, because she was pretty obviously looking for cracks in relationships, would be to ask one question, which you'd answer, and then ask the same question moments later. You just think, "I don't like this. You're digging around." But then again, it's their job.
Luckily, there aren't many cracks in the group and we all get on. Me and Emma have had our rows, which you will with anybody you spend so much time with. The only reason Rupert and I have probably never argued is that he's the most totally laidback person you'll ever meet. You could probably set fire to him and he wouldn't really mind. We've been very lucky to get on so well for so many years. It'll be very sad when it's all over.
Empire Magazine / Planet Syndication
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