All grown up... Daniel Radcliffe. Photo: Dennys Ilic
Friday Jul 03, 2009
As the sixth movie arrives, the boy who grew up as Harry Potter tells
Stephanie Bunbury why he sees his journey as a loss of innocence.
Luckily for everyone, Daniel Radcliffe has stayed short. The boy apparently
born to be Harry Potter, crowned for life at the age of 11, is now about to
turn 20 but he is still a convincing schoolboy, jabbing from well below at the
Dark Lord with his wand, still of a size to sit on Hagrid's knee if he were so
inclined. Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger, has turned into a
glamour-puss who is this year's "face of Burberry"; Rupert Grint, aka Ron
Weasley, is doing slacker Brit films and grunts his way through interviews.
But Daniel Radcliffe is forever Harry, the smart kid with character. Onscreen,
he is not only a wizard but the decent boy who stands up to the bullies from
Slytherin. Offscreen, he is funny and self-deprecating rather than the
mini-diva one might expect. Say what you like about public schools: they do
turn them out well at Hogwarts.
J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has been a touchstone for a whole
generation of kids growing up: Radcliffe's generation, in fact. So what's the
appeal? "I think for younger kids, it's the magic that draws them in,"
Radcliffe says. "But what sustains them - and where I think Jo [Rowling] is
brilliant - is that she makes it mundane. It's household chore magic, which
leaves room for the characters."
Everyone, he says, can relate to some aspect of Harry Potter. And more
children grow into Harry all the time, so he's unlikely to |
|
disappear. "It's a
bit like Withnail & I," he adds with a grin. "With Withnail & I,
every year there is a group of students introducing the next lot to that
film." And as with Withnail & I, one could add, there are a fair number
of ageing Hogwarts wannabes who never grow out of it.
Whatever the secret is, it is certainly working. The books have sold more
than 400 million copies worldwide, while the film is the biggest blockbuster
series ever, with four of the five films released so far among the 20 biggest
earners in cinema. Altogether, the Potter brand is worth about $14 billion.
Young Radcliffe is worth quite a bit himself, of course: at the end of the
last film he was estimated to be worth $41 million.
One of the best things about the Potter books is the way in which Harry has
changed in a convincingly adolescent way. Unlike the old-style boy heroes
perpetually caught in pre-puberty, he has sexual and romantic stirrings. He
matures in other ways, too. "Most people seem to see these books as being
about good and evil," Radcliffe says. "There is that but I see them more as
the story of loss of innocence. It's about a kid who's gone into this world
and thinks everything is magical, wonderful and amazing and then realises that
this world is darker and more dangerous than the world he has come from. That
is his journey."
In Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, the second Potter film to be
directed by David Yates and the sixth in the series, Radcliffe says Harry
starts to take real steps towards killing Voldemort. As he moves into
adulthood, he is laying hold of his world. "And his relationship with
Dumbledore has changed completely. It has always been very much that of
student and teacher. Now it is soldier and general. Probably the note I got
more than any other on this shoot was a reminder of how high the stakes are."
Potter fans can talk endlessly about the relative merits of the films but
Radcliffe says he finds it hard to distinguish between them; for him, they
form one long story. "They blend into one. Even with different directors. But
in terms of the people I see every day, not much has changed - make-up and
costume has been pretty much the same right the way through. So it doesn't
feel like huge amounts of change."
But he does think the new Potter has the darkest moments of any of the
films. He prefers intensity himself, which seems surprising in someone who
turns press conferences into stand-up routines. "Yes but that's nervous 'I'd
better start making jokes' mode," he says, frankly. "That's a default setting
for me. Also that's an actors' thing. I'm not saying all actors are
attention-seekers but I certainly am. So when you've got all that attention, I
suppose it goes to your head." With which he is already smiling ironically;
Daniel Radcliffe looks as if he has never let anything go to his head in his
life. |
