"Totes awks!" ran a headline in the Daily Star this week. While other bastions of the printed press were falling over themselves trying to get a unique story on Daniel Radcliffe, the British tabloid homed in on the fact that the Harry Potter star was unaware he was sharing the red carpet at the premiere of his latest film, What If, with members of the "reality" TV show The Only Way is Essex.
Totes awks, if you're unfamiliar with the bizarre lexicon used these days by those younger than 20, translates as "totally awkward". Yet his credibility with more mature types increased tenfold the instant that he told another tabloid, The Sun: "I haven't even been paying attention. If they're TOWIE and Made In Chelsea, then I'm not sure. I haven't seen those shows." Would he have felt even slightly awkward at the admission? It's doubtful.
As the actor who played the lead character in one of the most successful film franchises in cinema history, Radcliffe has grown up under the constant gaze of the world's media and its consumers. Now that he's free of the shackles of being Harry Potter, he's starting to open a bit. Without having to worry too much about incurring the wrath of the Potter novels' author, J K Rowling, these days, the 25-year-old is proving remarkably candid about his past experiences. His new film – a romantic comedy – might not break any new ground, but Radcliffe is a one-man headline generator.
Highlights this week?
"I've not been someone that shirks nudity through my career," he told the Daily Express.
"I am fairly romantic, at least as my character is in the film. I've surprised people with trips to New York before and such things," he confessed to the London Evening Standard, before adding: "But sometimes it backfires on me." Unfortunately he didn't go into any more detail.
"I think I'm a feminist," he apparently told Stylist.
"Absolutely I'd do a superhero film, it'd be great fun," is what London Live coaxed out of him. And, on the subject of his own acting, he told the Daily Mail: "It's hard to watch a film like Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, because I'm just not very good in it. I hate it. My acting is very one note and I can see I got complacent and what I was trying to do just didn't come across."
Vogue magazine conducted a quick-fire, 73-question video interview with Radcliffe in which he revealed a dislike for vegetable curry, a penchant for punk, that he prefers boxer shorts to briefs, wears a suit twice a month and that Harry Potter didn't actually need to wear glasses. "That was just a fashion statement."
What comes through loud and clear, though, with the absurdity of the questions being asked of Radcliffe whenever he’s seen in public at the moment, is that the world can’t get enough of him – something that his parents could foresee happening 15 years ago, when the idea was first mooted about him becoming Harry Potter on the silver screen. It was something that they felt keen to protect him from, initially hiding from him the fact that he’d been earmarked for the role. In a situation where many parents might have simply signed on the dotted line with nothing but pound or dollar signs in their eyes while viewing their offspring as little more than a meal ticket, Radcliffe’s mum and dad acted differently – and that might have something to do with their own past careers.
Born Daniel Jacob Radcliffe on July 23, 1989, in Fulham, west London, he was keen to start acting by the time he was 5 years old. The only child of a literary agent, Alan George Radcliffe, and his wife, Marcia Jeannine Gresham, casting agent who had been involved with numerous BBC film productions, the necessary connections were already there. Both parents had also acted when they were children.
Radcliffe Jr acted in a number of school plays, and, at the age of 10, made his screen acting debut in David Copperfield, a two-part television adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, made by the BBC, in which he played the titular character as a young boy. His performance, as well as his physical appearance, was noticed by Chris Columbus, who was about to direct the first Harry Potter film, as well as the film's producer, David Heyman.
Radcliffe was attending the Sussex House School, a day school in Chelsea, London, and his parents, understandably, didn’t want anything getting in the way of his education. They’d been told that the deal would be for six films, all of which would be produced in Los Angeles, so for them it was a case of “no deal”. Columbus, however, was adamant and so were Warner Bros, the studio, who instead put an offer on the Radcliffe table of a two-film contract, with both to be shot in the UK. Unsure whether their son would do more than the two, they relented and signed – and the rest is cinema history.
The notoriously hard-to-please author of the Harry Potter novels, J K Rowling, claimed to be delighted with the choice. "I don't think Chris Columbus could have found a better Harry," she said of his appointment, and the millions of Potter fans, young and old, seemed to agree with her. With his innocent looks and large, round spectacles, he perfectly embodied the young wizard that so many had conjured in their own minds while reading the books.
That two-film deal soon evolved into multi-picture commitments. Radcliffe, while filming, was schooled by on-set tutors and admits that, despite his excellent grades, he wasn’t the ideal academic. He reasoned that there really was no need to go to college or university because he’d already found his calling. The fact that he was a multimillionaire by that stage probably helped the decision making.
His salary for acting in the first film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, netted him a "seven -figure" sum, meaning that he was paid at least Dh6 million. The money was invested for him by his parents, and by the time he'd starred in the sixth Potter instalment, he was earning the equivalent of Dh90 million per film – enough to put him in The Sunday Times Rich List in 2006, which estimated his personal fortune to be worth £14m (Dh85.8m). In 2010, Forbes ranked Radcliffe as the fifth highest-grossing Hollywood actor – not bad for someone who was still six months away from turning 21. That mop of jet-black hair and those specs had served him well.
Few in the acting profession are happy to be typecast – and Radcliffe is no exception. As glad as he obviously was for Harry Potter's success, he was keen to distance himself from the role and has embraced less-than-obvious acting choices in recent years. Starring in small cinema productions, television dramas and on stage (clothes optional), he has successfully proved that he's more than just a kid wizard; when he sent up his own persona as a hormonally troubled idiot in an episode of Ricky Gervais's Extras, he demonstrated a self-deprecating sense of humour so often missing from those in his profession.
As one of the acting world's most eligible bachelors, the media has understandably kept a very close eye on Radcliffe's private life, but he has successfully managed to keep it just that: private. In April this year, for instance, he revealed, that he'd been in a relationship with the actress Erin Darke for two years – something that nobody seemed to know about. The two had met on the set of the film Kill Your Darlings in 2012, around the same time as he announced his split from a production assistant, Rosie Coker, who he had met while making the sixth Potter film.
While he’s busy treading the red carpet promoting his latest film, Daniel Radcliffe is still but a whippersnapper. He has decades left to nurture his career as an actor, and it’s doubtful that he’ll ever say goodbye to those smaller, more esoteric roles that he seems so enamoured with. He doesn’t exactly need the money that dumb summer blockbusters would line his pockets with, and he says that he harbours desires to direct, too.
Resolutely British, he does, however, own a home in the West Village of Lower Manhattan, New York. He’s enjoying life, and his parents can take pleasure, not only in their family’s previously unimaginable wealth, but also in the fact that, with their considerate guidance, he has matured into a seemingly level-headed young man – a poster boy for anyone who’s ever, in frustration and despair, wished that they’d had a magic wand at their disposal.
[ khackett@thenational.ae ]
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