Daniel Radcliffe has elegant hands, which he uses often to make a point as he speaks in his gentle English accent. We are sitting backstage at Broadway’s Al Hirschfeld Theatre, three hours before a matinee of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, in which for 10 months Radcliffe has starred as the sweetly conniving mail room employee turned executive. It’s his first musical, and it has won him critical praise, in part because his character is so very different from his role as Harry Potter, protagonist of the $7.7 billion–grossing, 10-year film franchise that made this 22-year-old one of the richest actors of his generation.
When I ask Radcliffe how he is, he enthusiastically replies, “I am happy!”—his cheeks dimpling as he grins broadly. The source of his happiness today? Someone he loves has flown to New York just to be with him.
Charming, serious, and surprisingly open, Radcliffe seems more like a bright college student relaxing between classes than a world-famous actor. At 5-foot-5, wearing a blue shirt, fitted jeans, and white sneakers, he has a dancer’s tight, wiry body and a boyish face dominated by large, blue, deeply expressive eyes. With his run in How to Succeed winding down (his last performance was slated for New Year’s Day), he is eager for the release of his first post-Potter film, on Feb. 3: The Woman in Black, a character-driven supernatural thriller.
“While it’s very frightening,” Radcliffe says of the movie, in which he plays a widowed lawyer, “it’s also about love, grief, and longing. It’s beautifully written and very compelling.”
He is well aware that he has entered the second stage of his career and faces a task that has derailed many former child stars: the transition to adult roles. With candor and humor, he discusses that challenge—as well as his boyhood, his fears, his hopes, and what it means to really be in love—on this winter morning.
PARADE When did you know you were interested in acting?
I was 5. I turned to my mom and said, “Mom, I want to be an actor.” And she said, “No, no.” My mom and dad were actors when they were younger and had a horrible experience of it. My dad became a literary agent and my mom a casting director. [Radcliffe is their only child.]
Growing up, did you have the sense of being an outsider?
Totally! I remember being 6 years old and knowing that I saw the world differently from the rest of the boys in my class. I have always said to myself there must be a reason for me being this weird. There’s got to be a payoff at some point.
Your dad is a Protestant from Ulster and your mom is English and Jewish. Were you raised in a particular religion?
There was never [religious] faith in the house. I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I’m English.
My dad believes in God, I think. I’m not sure if my mom does. I don’t. I have a problem with religion or anything that says, “We have all the answers,” because there’s no such thing as “the answers.” We’re complex. We change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human complexity.
In 2000, a friend of your parents, producer David Heyman, asked you to audition to play Harry Potter, and your parents agreed. You won the role and your life changed completely.
Yes. I got very lucky at the age of 11 and had this great job. For the first two films, I was just having fun. Then I started to see the potential for acting as storytelling, as being part of something fundamental to human existence. Working with Gary Oldman was a big part of that.
How would you have been different if you had not been Harry Potter?
[When I was cast] I was at a private school—an almost exclusively white, very privileged place—and I was put into a film set with people from 100 different backgrounds, races, classes, everything. Suddenly, because of Potter, my worldview got much wider than it would have been.
At 17, when you played the deranged, sometimes naked stable boy onstage in Equus, or this past year starring in your first musical, did you worry that the critics would be gunning for you because you’re a young, successful movie star?
[laughs] I knew they would. But I’ve worked out recently that I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, “You can’t do that—that’s going to fail,” for me to prove myself wrong. What I’ve learned, particularly this year, is that all actors—no matter their status or brilliance—still feel like fools.
Fools?
Yes, like we’re conning people and we’re not really any good at it. What I learned is that acting is to a large extent about trying to stave off self-doubt long enough to be natural and real onstage. I’m at the point in my career where I should be learning a huge amount from every job I do, and unless something’s going to give me that, I’m not really very attracted to it.
 
I have quite a rich inner life, and I’m constantly looking for a way to express that. I haven’t found it yet in acting. When you’re playing a character, you’re only going to find outlets for very specific parts of your inner world. Self-expression is something that I love and yearn for. I need it, absolutely.
Is that why you write poetry? You’ve published a few poems and written short fiction.
Poetry is something I love to do. Good poetry has an amazing ability to be communicative before it’s even understood. I get emotional just from the beauty of words. I write best at night, and I haven’t written nearly as much this year, because after being onstage I get into bed and fall asleep. When filming, normally I sit for an hour and try to write when I get home.
Are you a romantic?
Yes. I don’t know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot. Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up. I still see something very romantic in the world that perhaps isn’t there. I suppose I want it to be the place of knights and that kind of stuff.
Knights marry princesses. Do you want to get married?
Yes, absolutely. When growing up, I thought of marriage as being very official, drawing up a contract. It seemed slightly clinical to me. But then you meet somebody that you really love and you think, “Actually, I wouldn’t mind standing up in front of my friends and family and telling them how much I love you and that I want to be with you forever.”
Have you met anyone like that?
Yes, I have. The person I’m with now is pretty wonderful—my girlfriend, Rosie Coker, who I met on the last Potter film. She is a production assistant. We’ve been going out for just over a year now. She landed in New York on Sunday and she’s in my dressing room right now, actually.
Are you in love with her?
Yes, absolutely. When Rosie’s here, every day seems better. Ultimately, I think, it comes down to that—having somebody in your life who makes you happier than you thought you could be. When you find somebody like Rosie, who is smart, kind, loving, and not crazy, you hang on to her.
Love is also like having a cap on your own happiness, because you can only be as happy as the person you’re in love with is. I realized that for the first time a couple days ago. I’d had a great day, and I got home and Rosie was very down about something. I thought, “Why don’t I feel good? I feel anxious somehow.” It took me about five minutes to realize that it was because I was worrying about her.
I’m not an easy person to love. There are lots of times when I’m a very good boyfriend, but there are times when I’m useless. I mean, I’m a mess around the house. I talk nonstop. I become obsessed with things. This year it’s fantasy football, which means Rosie has to listen to me talking 24 hours a day about this team. “Should I take this player out, do you think, darling?” And she listens to it, and she loves me for my oddness, my awkwardness, all of those things that I hate about myself. She finds them cute. I guess that’s love.
You’ve had girlfriends before her.
Every girlfriend I’ve ever had I met through work, and I generally spent a lot of time with each before we started hanging out. We never went on dates. Rosie was the first girl I went on dates with.
Why was that?
I hated dating because I’m crap at it! [laughs] With Rosie, I didn’t know what was appropriate, like on which date you’re supposed to try and kiss her. At the end of the second date I pulled a move out of the Bela Lugosi Book of Woo—I went to kiss Rosie and at the last minute lost my nerve and ended up kissing her neck, which is such a weirdly intimate place to kiss somebody on a second date. Afterward, I texted her, saying, “I’m sorry, what I just did probably seems very odd to you.” Fortunately, she just found it really funny, so she kept coming back.
Last year you gave up booze. Why?
My inner life was being drowned. I’ve worked with Richard Harris, Gary Oldman, all those actors who went crazy when they were young, and I always wanted that. The idea of that kind of life and chaos was always so appealing to me. Unfortunately, the way I do it, there is no romance to it! [laughs] There is nothing glorious or triumphant about it—it was pathetic, boring, and unhappy.
You’ve had enormous success for someone so young. Do you fear that it won’t last?
Yes. But it’s reality, not fear. It will happen, and I have accepted that. In a way it’s a great relief that I will never, ever do a film as successful as the Harry Potter series. But neither will anybody else. [laughs] Or it will take them a long time.
If this success lasts longer, great. If it doesn’t, so be it. I’ve had enough fame to last a lifetime. As long as I’m happy with the work I’m doing, I don’t mind. The thing I’ve realized this year is that all that matters at the end of the day is that I’m happy with my life and the people around me, the people I love. That, ultimately, is all I care about.
