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Culture


HOW DANIEL RADCLIFFE OUTRAN HARRY POTTER

He was the world’s most famous child star. Then he had to figure out what came
next.

By Chris Heath
Photographs by Lila Barth

April 30, 2024
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On August 23, 2000, after an extensive search and a months-long rumble of media
speculation, a press conference was held in London. There, the actor who’d been
chosen to play Harry Potter in the first movie adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s
best-selling novels was unveiled, alongside the film’s other two child leads.
According to the on-screen caption in the BBC’s coverage of the event, this
11-year-old’s name was “Daniel Radford.”


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Until the previous year, Daniel Radcliffe, as he was actually known, hadn’t had
any acting experience whatsoever, aside from briefly playing a monkey in a
school play when he was about 6. When he’d auditioned for a British TV
adaptation of David Copperfield, it was less out of great hope or ambition than
because he’d been having a rough time at school and his parents (his father was
a literary agent; his mother, a casting agent) thought that the experience of
auditioning might boost his confidence. For an hour or two, the idea went, he’d
get to see a world that none of his classmates had seen. Instead, he found
himself cast as the young Copperfield, acting opposite Maggie Smith and Bob
Hoskins. And now this.



At the press conference, wearing the round glasses that his character needed but
he did not, Radcliffe explained with evident nerves how he had cried when he’d
heard the news. (He had been in the bath at the time.) The answer that seemed to
charm everyone was when he allowed, hesitantly, “I think I’m a tiny, tiny bit
like Harry because I’d like to have an owl.” Asked how he felt about becoming
famous, he replied, “It’ll be cool.”

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Chris Heath is a contributing writer for The Atlantic.