Aside from probes into his private life (and that hefty bank balance, reportedly in excess of $100 million), there’s only one question that seems to fluster Daniel Radcliffe.
Ask the former teen star about his post-Potter career choices, which to date have seemed rather extreme, and the affable star is quick to dismiss any notion of a strategy.
“People have been telling me that my choices are risky since I was 17,” he counters. “When people say, ‘That’s a risk’, what they often mean is, ‘We don’t know what that’s going to be’. Which is a perfectly fine way to enter into something.
”People are either going to love it or not.”
Radcliffe, now a positively wizened 24, admits he’ll probably be forever associated with J.K. Rowling’s teen wizard franchise to some degree – and believes the 10-year stay at Hogwarts has meant each and every move since has been relentlessly scrutinised, particularly in his homeland of Britain.
“When I did Equus [Peter Shaffer’s acclaimed play, in which he played a naked man being aroused by a horse], there was a headline in the newspapers that said, ‘Crash! What’s that It’s the sound of a career coming to a grinding halt.’ And that person had probably not read the play. I played one character for so long, I just get more attention than most actors would, for playing different parts. They said,’You’re playing so many different parts’. And I’m thinking, ‘Do you say that to Hugh Jackman’ Or anybody else who plays a variety of things”
The notion that Radcliffe has had to shock to be taken seriously, away from “Potter” (as he refers to his former day job), is absurd, he says.
“I don’t view it as going to extremes. Equus is an extreme play, but it’s also a modern classic. It’s not like I was doing some mad, new art play or something. I think some people think I’m out to shock, after Potter. But those movies were primarily geared towards kids and now I’m doing movies that aren’t. So I’m going
