Daniel Radcliffe

Um.... Well, growing up, my favourite comic book character was Daredevil, so Daredevil was great, but there was also, like, if I could be one character from all of literature it would be... Woland from my favourite book, wait no, I change my answer, I would be Behemoth the cat from my favourite book which is called The Master and Margarita, and he is like, a 5 foot tall black cat who shoots a revolver.

Well, that's incredibly kind, and, you know, you're welcome, I have, I think, just as much fun making those films as you did watching them, so it's always lovely when people say it as if I've done them a favour and I was having the best time of my life making those films, so it was a win-win for everybody I think.

In terms of - I just finished reading SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5, which is a fantastic book, and I would hopefully be in any adaptation of Master and Margarita, I would do literally absolutely anything on that set if they would let me, but in terms of like other books I would recommend, I also read a book not long ago called "Foe" and it's kind of a reimagining of the Robinson Crusoe story, I'll leave it at that but it's a brilliant book.

Not really.

Even as a kid, I hadn't the full scope of the Harry Potter phenomenon, hadn't really, ever, made an impression on me I guess? Obviously I'd read the first couple of books, but I wasn't as into it as a lot of my class was, so no, I could never have imagined it was as big as it was. I think maybe it's only now that I'm really starting to get a fuller sense of how wide-reaching it was, and how many people's lives it affected, which is very cool.

He really does! Um, and, er, he also owned at one point, at one point he owned llamas and a hovercraft, you heard correctly, hahaha, and a 1950's chevy pickup, he had a collection of weird and wonderful things at his house.

Well, one of the moments in my life that will forever be... you know, immortal in my memory, would be - because Gary Oldman is a bass player, a very good bass player, yeah, and, um, I started learning bass on the 3rd film when he joined the cast. And so one day, I think actually maybe on my 14th birthday, that day started with Gary teaching me the bass line to "Come Together" by the Beatles, yeah! And you know, that was just an amazing, amazing moment. What else... Michael Gambon was always also hilarious to be around. Something not every knows about Michael is that he collects and restores antique dueling pistols. Yeah! And they're really his passion, much more than acting is, and, uh, I remember he one morning gave me a demonstration of how you would shoot a man in a duel with a 17th century pistol in one hand and his morning coffee in the other!

Yeah, so my life has been blessed with many surreal, cool moments like that.

I've been shown that meme by a few friends, and obviously there are quite a few Harry Potter related memes and jokes and things, you see these things, and I have to say that one really made me laugh! It made me enjoy my name way more than I ever have before. So obviously Daniel Radcliffe beats Daniel Boringcliffe 100% of the time.

And I suppose I should use this an opportunity to thank whomever made that particular meme, because it really is very good.

Ehm - not particularly.

I think we had very quickly become aware that stuff was not going to be in all the films that we couldn't fit everything in, I think I remember the thing early on that me, Emma and Rupert were all slightly surprised by, that we had all ABSOLUTELY LOVED the chapter in the Chamber of Secrets book about the - I think was it Nearly Headless Nick's Birthday Party? But I think it was some sort of a ghost birthday party that was not in the films, and I remember at the time we were all quite surprised by that. I know some people would have been quite happy to see a 4 hour long Harry Potter movie with every detail in there, but some people also would not have...

First of all, thank you to that person!

And, yeah, you know, in England now when we grow up, there we are, so suffused by American culture, from you know, shows like FRIENDS and FRASIER to the Toy Story movies which I saw when I was obviously very young - I think I've been practicing my American accent - I used to be really into WWF and I would play with wrestling action figures and give them American accents, so I think I've been practicing since I was about 9.

The only thing I would add to that is that I've been told by quite a few people that i sound like Chris Columbus, who directed the first 2 Harry Potter films, so I think subconsciously I may be doing an impression of him.

I mean, I... to me, it's not a... to me I absolutely think I would be in Gryffindor! But there's never any doubt of that for me. Yeah. I like, maybe I'm just biased because I played one for so long, but I could never picture myself in any other colours.

Um... well, recently a couple of people have asked me to sign a piece of paper so they can then get it tattooed. And, you know, that's pretty weird. Just because I have pretty horrible handwriting - that AMA sign was me printing, but you should see my cursive, it's not pretty! So yeah, I would advise people against doing that. I have signed a picture of Elijah Wood - and I think we've also both said in interviews that we would like each other to play each other in films of our lives - but I was on a red carpet in Japan, and this Japanese man gave me a picture of Elijah, and I knew i wasn't going to get past the language barrier to explain, so I wrote "I am not Elijah Wood, signed Daniel Radcliffe."

And then also people seem obsessed with getting me to sign baseballs, which I don't understand... Quidditch balls would be relevant, at least, but just baseballs, for no reason at all.

Um, I don't really drink much tea! If I do, it's with a little bit of milk and no sugar. But in terms of breakfast... I mean, um, my ideal breakfast would probably be eggs benedict with a large bowl of cereal brand - it's stuff called CrunchyNut, yeah, which you can get in America, but you really have to search for it, but it's an English cereal, and it's the best. With milk, oh yeah. No fruit, don't be silly. Just basically eggs, bacon, bread and cereal in any form is my ideal breakfast.

You know what, I don't think we did I'm pretty sure. Because I think that by that point, they had figured out my handwriting was so bad that they would never let it be seen in the film. So I'm pretty sure one of the props guys wrote "Harry Potter" neatly on a piece of paper for me to put in.

The villain. 100%. I think it's generally more interesting, and honestly, more what I'm suited for, to be honest. I don't see myself necessarily - I mean, I know there was a lot of action in Potter and I liked those sequences, but I don't think of myself as a natural action star.

Can they be dead?

Okay.

Well, uh, I would say, um: this is hard. Probably John Lennon, cuz that'd be awesome, and, uh, Tom Lehrer, who's a comic songwriter whom I'm obsessed with, yeah, and what's an all-time dinner fantasy party without Einstein? So Einstein, yeah! and probably Keith Richards, yeah, to liven everything up.

Probably Sirius. Like I always loved the character, and then Gary's portrayal of him I thought was perfect. Or Lupin, really. Any of the characters my dad used to hang out with, other than Wormtail. There was always something bout those two guys I loved a lot.

Just "Dan" is best. "Daniel" is fine, but I always sort of think I'm in trouble. And "Danny," I think, if you call yourself "Danny" you give everyone around you the right to sing "Danny Boy" to you ALL THE TIME, and it's a nice song, but once you've heard it 1,000 times, you don't want to hear it every time you introduce yourself to somebody.

VERY important. To be honest, if Alex Aja and Joe Hill are happy with my performance, then I'm happy with it! Those are the two people I'm thinking about most, and talking to most, about my thoughts on the character and my approach to it.

So yeah, the fact that they are happy is awesome!

Yeah... favourite scene to film... god... that is a really hard question, to pick just one... the first thing that comes to mind, and it's a silly one, but doing all the Gringott's stuff in the last movie with Rupert and Helena and Warwick and Emma, that was like a really fun time. We were all enjoying ourselves in that, it's an action sequence so it was quite, it was more of a technical challenge than an emotional one, so it was a lot of fun to get right.

George Clooney... Jennifer Lawrence... I just think they'd be really cool, Paul Rudd, I met him and was like "You're awesome!" I just want to work with people you can get on with, and you have a good rapport with, and those are definitely some of them. Also directors more than actors, whom I think "I want to work with them." So you know, people like the Coen Brothers, or Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Christopher Nolan, again, it's directors i suppose I get more excited about than actors.

WOW.

Um... that's a really good question. First of all, congratulations to you for asking me a Harry Potter question I have NEVER been asked before, that is not easily achieved!

I would say... I was gonna say my iPod, prolly put it in that, but I would put it inside an album on the iPod, so you'd have to open that album. So I somehow want it to be connected to a particular album that means something, like Ziggy Stardust. So that's how I'd want to do that.

Wonderful. I mean, he was just such a sweet man. You know... kind of relentlessly charming with women, I think I'm pretty sure I saw him flirting with female journalists at press conferences, I remember being a young child in awe of it... but yeah, he was a legend, and so to have been able to work with somebody of that generation, which was an incredibly important generation of actors for Britain, is amazing.

That's a GOOD question. I don't know yet, I haven't narrowed it down, but because I've very recently - like within the last 6 months - watched the original Star Wars movies, I'm like a brand new Star Wars fan, so I might go with something Star Wars related! And I got to go out to the Star Wars set recently, because a lot of my friends are working on it crew-wise.. so something Star Wars related, but not sure yet.

Any suggestions?

I'm leaning towards Boba Fett, but I haven't found a good enough costume yet.

I read Alan's diary, and just tried to watch as many interviews with him as I could. But because I was playing him at 17, there wasn't any footage of him at that point. So the diary was really the most helpful resource as to who he was.

Um, we listened to heavy metal, basically. That was it. Yeah! And because the two guys that were doing the makeup, Mike McCarthy and Mike Fields, they were both big metal heads, and I mean, the actual process -they made it so easy - the horns themselves only took about 20 minutes to put on, and even some of the more extreme makeup that we had near the end only took a couple of hours, so you know, I had it easier than a lot of actors do. And yeah, so Metallica, Megadeth, and what was the other band we listened to loads of... shit... can't remember it'll come back to me.

HAHA! Brilliant.

Just like... it was exhausting, but New Zealand's lovely all year 'round.

That... might be where you lose me, I'm afraid.

I don't really know that much about anime. I haven't watched that much, so I don't actually know who I might be. But again, if you'd like to suggest who you think I might be, I would welcome those anime suggestions.

Em - the Potter Puppet Pals were always, I thought, very very funny. It is hard to make really good Harry Potter jokes, though, because a lot of them have been done, but I thought Puppet Pals were very funny. The best "Alan Rickman as Snape" impression was, 100%, Bill Hader when I did Saturday Night Live, yeah, but maybe my favourite joke at Harry Potter's expense was in South Park, the episode, The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring. It's not a very PC joke, but it really made me laugh.

No, I haven't. There was one yesterday, actually, and I'm here. You know, I love the NFL, and I'm actually from London, so I feel like I am the exact target audience for the proposed London NFL team, and yet even I think it's a ridiculous idea, like the idea that American players would be forced to play for a London team which they wouldn't have the same amount of, you know, pride in playing for is a very odd thing. I want to see LOADS of NFL, I love they do games at Wembley, but a London team is, I think, a bit odd to me.

I think it stays very true to the book. Of course some things have to change, but to me, what makes the book remarkable is the mixing of the romantic elements, the comic elements, and the, sort of, horror and fantasy stuff, and what we have absolutely done in the film is captured all those tones and they compliment each other beautifully as they do in the book. So that would be the biggest success of the movie's adaptation.

Cool! Thank you very much! Well, I did a romantic comedy that came out this summer called "What if" that is pretty funny, and I hope I get to do a lot of comedy for the rest of my career. It's what i grew up watching, mostly, so I am definitely drawn to it, and I like to think I bring a bit of it to anything I do - even a dramatic film like "Kill Your Darlings" can have some very light moments to it as well.

God... I should probably about the one that was pulled on ME, rather than any I pulled. Because it came from a very unexpected place.

There's - in the 3rd film - there's a shot in the great hall of all the kids sleeping in the great hall, and the camera starts very very wide, and comes in so that it's an inch from my face, a very long developing set, yeah, and Alan Rickman decided he would plant one of those fart machines in my, uh, sleeping bag, and they waited until like -the camera had come in for this huge DRAMATIC developing shot, and then unleashed this tremendous noise in the great hall.

I immediately thought: "This is one of the other kids fucking around, and we were going to get in trouble."

But as it turns out, it was one of the members of Britain's acting royalty.

I think I laughed a lot, was probably a bit embarrassed, but it was really really funny.

Yeah! The Shining is probably my favourite, and Straw Dogs, and tell you what, just because it has a nostalgic place in my heart - ANACONDA.

HAHAHA!

Um, yeah! I mean, pretty terrifying! The first few years I was genuinely quite intimidated by Alan, just because of the voice and the way he sort of carries himself. But as I grew up, I realized he was one of the kindest and most supportive members of that cast to me. I mean, Alan has cut short holidays that he's been having to come and see me in plays, and take me out for dinner afterwards to talk to me about stuff, I think when he realized how serious I was about wanting to be an actor, and he knew what a particular world the Potter set was to grow up in, he just sort of made it his - he just really wanted to help us all and has been very helpful to me, certainly.

Oh! I mean... anywhere you'd care to name. I've been recognized in Antigua, I got recognized a lot there.

There isn't anywhere in the world Potter hasn't reached.

I was on a roller coaster, I think it was in Paris, actually, and it was in the middle of winter, and I was wearing basically like a thing in England, don't know if you have them here, we called them "Snoods" - they're like a warm thing that covers you whole head, basically only shows your eyes, and I was like 12 years old, I was wearing one on a roller coaster, and I guess my eyes do give me away because the people BEHIND us somehow recognized me and asked an autograph when we got off the coaster !And we were like "How did you SEE me?!" it was impressive.

Um, the Colbert Report. Mystery Science Theater 3000. Yeah, like I JUST discovered them, and I am obsessed at the moment! They're amazing yeah! And there's also an English show, called The Thick of It, which is kind of a show - Armando Ianucci who does VEEP, it was the political show that spring boarded him to start working here, and it's some of the best, funniest television that's ever been made.

When you do a show on Broadway, the overwhelming sense of how excited everyone is to be there, from the audience to the people you are working with in the show, is amazing and creates one of the most exciting working environments I've ever been in. And, you know, the bond that is formed by doing a show together for a year is really something quite remarkable. And you know, I have probably more friends in terms of the people I see regularly from HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS even from something like Potter, to be honest, because there are relationships you form - that's the way I've always found it generally, with film the strongest bonds i form are with the crew, and with theater I form the strongest bonds with the cast, because when you are onstage and have to look out for each other's backs in that way, it forms a very very strong connection.

As excited as they WANT to be!!

I am not involved at all, and so I don't know anything about it, so I have no inkling as to what they are going to be like or about, but I'm sure they will be exciting. Jo Rowling is writing them, so that's a pretty good sign!

Originality... wit... a good moment of transformation, if you would have it, for a character in some way so the character isn't the same at the end of the story as he was in the beginning, it could be anything like that, or the story itself, it's all those things you're looking for! It could be the director you're doing the movie with, or people you are going to be working with, those are all things you factor in when deciding what you're going to be doing next.

YES!

Just write that movie! And absolutely!

Let's do this!

Or could there be a film where one of us, is like, an impersonator of the other? We've got to eke out some mileage out of this mistaken identity!

Oh.

I think, again, and I'm sorry, it's like the third time I've referenced it in this AMA, but I would go with The Master and Margarita, because it has never been done as well as it could be, so I am hoping I will meet that eccentric billionaire at some point.

well, which Hedwig? There were 3 or 4. I imagine they are all still living with Gary Gero, who was the head of the animals department on Potter. I imagine he is looking after them all somewhere. I imagine they are all at the home where actor owls retire to.

Well, because of the nature of the Horns mean that people confess their deepest, darkest stuff to him, and do crazy things around him all the time, it sort of means that the challenge as an actor is doing justice to the insanity of the situation that you're in, and reacting appropriately to the craziness, but also keeping it grounded and real and truthful, because you can't just have, you know, 2 hours of people freaking out, that's not interesting to watch.

So yeah, the challenge was finding the balance between the craziness of the story, and the very real tone that we wanted to get for the film.

Hehe!

YES, you should.

Personally, you know, I would - I'm biased, because I don't like looking at pictures of my young self, like other people looking at their young selves, so you can skip the first few if you want, but I think they started to get really really good. I would say watch them, but you know, I'm biased.

I do. Yes, I definitely do.

Um, I am much more of like a sports gamer. So I love the Madden games, all the NFL stuff, boxing games, Fifa a bit, but I also love Call of Duty. I can get lost on that for a few hours. But yeah, I'm not very good at video games. I tend to play them to the point where - I think the reason I like sports games is because there are no levels to get through, because i always reach a point on other games where I can't get any further, and it's not fun anymore, so that's when I ditch them and go back to playing Madden.

I would attribute it to my parents and also to the crew of the Potter films, who were very good at treating us like kids rather than as actors, as they should have done. But yeah, it's hard to say what it comes down to. I think also when you grow up in the media, you get a very clear sense of how crazy the media is, and you know - basically the countdown that Emma's birthday was to when she turned 18, or 17, or whatnot, it was insane. It was insane. And I think when you see that perspective that we all saw at very young ages, you do get an extra level of awareness maybe. But also, thank you for the compliment of saying we are all grounded and intelligent, that is very nice.

Ok, that's a good question. I would go with WOLF for the land animal, definitely, because I've always loved wolves. I think... for the air animal, it would have to be maybe like an albatross, one of those long distance journey birds, that would cool. And then for a sea animal... I guess I'd want to be a shark, because not much could fuck with you! Because the sea strikes me as a horrible place, anything could kill you all the time, so the sea is where you would want to be a shark. Like a great white or a Hammerhead, maybe Hammerheads because they are more social.

So maybe a hammerhead shark, to be specific. Because i like the power of being a shark, but i don't like the isolation of a great white's life.

Someone asked me my favourite food: Cheeseburgers. And pizza, and stuff like that. Because I don't believe when people say anything else is their favourite food, I tend not to believe them.

Oh yeah, of course. I wasn't going to leave there without grabbing a set of glasses!

Well, I watch a lot of sports videos and stuff like that. I think the NFL Bad Lip Reading might be one of my favourite YouTube things. I watch a lot of Ted Talks, in terms of things on the internet.

What else do i watch? That's the thing... I like all sorts of, it's great for research, YouTube, and watching Alan Ginsberg debate William Buckley, things like that. I lost a lot of time like that, because since then I've watched all of Buckley's interviews like that with Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky... Because it's kind of intellectual heavyweight debate that is gone from television now, but is still cool to watch. And because I met him quite recently, in the last few days I've been watching a lot of Russell Brand's videos on there. I met him because he was promoting his new book in the UK. Normally I immediately distrust actors as soon as they are talking about politics, because i think it's quite self-serving, but he's very sincere, and I really got on with him when I met him.

Yes, of course, absolutely, God! I think that was part of the huge success of those books, is that it taps into a set of powers and a fantasy world that literally everybody would love to be a part of. I think I would be a fantastic one if I were really one in real life. I think I would probably be, like, one of the cool Dark Arts teachers. There weren't very many good ones, but I would be the Lupin equivalent.

Only, uh, for myself. I think Shakespeare is a wonderful thing to work on for me when I want to prepare for a part but I don't want to over-work on the script. So I will find a character in Shakespeare that i feel explores the same themes as whatever i'm playing, and sort of work on it like that, because the way Shakespeare writes, he writes so viscerally about so many universal things, that it's an amazing resource for actors preparing.

But I would LOVE to do some for real.

I suppose I would... I would remove the bullshit hierarchy from the film industry, because there are certain people who do my job, and also directors and producers, who seem to think the job they do gives them license to treat people who work for them badly, and there is no good reason for that, and it should not be tolerated.

I know that if I ever get to direct, it will not be present anywhere on my set.

I would definitely say a wolf. 100%. I've been obsessed with them since I was very young, yeah. A grey wolf, to be specific.

It will depend (unfortunately, because i might be starting a job in November) - I would love to be able to keep this facial hair for as long as I can, but it's always work depending! And I don't want to make a promise to charity and then welch to charity. But one year I hope to do it, and raise funds with a proper Movember!

I haven't been approached! And I don't know - haha- I don't know what I would do. My lack of Game of Thrones knowledge was revealed in an interview a while ago. I totally would side with the Starks, though, because their symbol is a wolf.

That's wonderful, and I love you too, but we should probably see other people.

Dog. Very, very firmly in the dog camp here.

Nothing, actually. I didn't! I just got up and started doing interviews.

Don't worry! I've caught up since, it's fine.

No, it wasn't something we thought about at the time. I have thought about it much more lately than I probably ever did at the time... but yeah, it feels wonderful, honestly, to have people still come up to you and say you were such a huge part of my childhood. It's genuinely lovely. I am very lucky to be famous for something so many people loved. And there's... yeah, I always like to say that I think some people think that because I'm making an effort to have a career for myself after Potter, that they somehow think I want to escape Potter? And I don't, I"m very proud of what those films were, and what we did with them. And so I always like to say I am happy to hear from people who still love the movies.

I remember when I met, once, a guy who'd been in a punk band in the 70's, and then he wouldn't talk about this punk days at all to me when I was asking, he sort of didn't want anything to do with it? And I remember being really disappointed by that, and thinking of how uncool it was for him to disown the thing that made him, and I just would never do that.

YEAH.

I love that show.

Hmmm.

I suppose I'm trying to... I'm trying to care less what people think of me, and the way I have done that, very successfully the past few months now, is not look at stuff on the internet. That is the key.

1) Fantastic! He is an amazing technical actor as well, because he's directed episodes of MAD MEN, so he has an understanding of the technical side that most actors couldn't dream of. And he's incredibly generous and funny as well, and I saw him actually not long ago, we had dinner in London.

2) You know what, I'm ashamed to say I don't know that show, and I will go look at it immediately! So thank you for the recommendation!

I mean, that is actually very difficult.

I would probably try and fight the huge duck. Because I think that I could sort of... try, if I could break it, then I could have the giant duck as my steed! So I think i'd go for that, because 100 tiny Elijahs, they are going to be very hard to control, I feel like that would be the last scene out of Toy Soldiers or something like that.

Despite being English, I am not, I'm afraid. It just passed me by. It was never one of the things I was into as a kid. So I'm sorry, Who fans.

Um... I suppose the worst thing is that because I was a child actor, you get a lot of questions about like, you know, you get a lot of, for a while is that child actors were perceived as bratty and obnoxious, so you come up against that quite a bit. And the best thing, is, obviously, being mistaken for Elijah Wood.

I'm listening to a lot of Jamie T's music lately, his new album's great... what else have I been listening to? First Aid Kits, I"m really into them right now. I've also rediscovered somebody around called Sister Rosetta Tharp, and you should all - she is just an amazing singer from the 1940's and 50's, way ahead of her time, great voice.

Um... I would say: Oooh! I would say a few different types of cheese, maybe like, a gruyere in there, with some cheddar as well, you have to have some meat, if it's not bacon it should be Parma ham or something like that, maybe a few different types of ham, in fact, and then ideally some sort of brioche-bun thing... some sort of brioche-y type bread would be ideal. TOASTED! Toasted, absolutely! It's all got to be melting into each other.