Quotes

After being cast as Harry Potter: I think I'm a tiny bit like Harry 'cos I'd like to have an owl. Yeah, that's the tiny bit, actually.

I don't know. People tell me I look mournful. They say, "Cheer up, Dan, it's not that bad!" Sometimes, I just look into space, which freaks people out. If I was ever required to do anything other than look haunted, I could. I'm a happy person. Though I don't, like, dot my "I's" with hearts or anything - that would be too happy.

I'm not much of a cake person.

But I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think I'll do all of them - I'll probably get too spotty or too tall or I'll shrink or something.

[on believing in magic] Absolutely. 100 percent.

I was in the bath at the time, and my dad came running in and said, "Guess who they want to play Harry Potter!?" and I started to cry. It was probably the best moment of my life.

I'm not clumsy, I'm just accident prone.

Upon seeing the movie: I'm a bit nervous about whether people will like it, but I've seen it, and I'm sure they will. It's really good - it's quite scary, it's quite emotional. Even I cried and I don't cry easily! I cried at the end credits when my name came up, and I was, like "Oh my God! I can't believe that's my name!" I've met so many people since we started filming and it's been wonderful. I've progressed so far and changed so much since the beginning. It's been like a real journey.

[on considering himself as a heartthrob] Personally, I can't see it, but if other people can, fine. Cool!

I would consider doing any part as long as the script is good and the film has an interesting director.

[on the bats on the set] I like them, but it's hard to concentrate when the bats fly about, and they pee while they fly.

I've never been one of the cool people at school, but then again, I don't get the people who are cool. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that they don't interest me.

[on math] Too many little numbers on one page!

Stage is much more intimidating than going before the cameras, because you can really screw up, and can't do a retake.

When I go back to school everyone asks a lot of questions. Then, after about a week, when I've answered everything, we get back to normal.

It's too far down the road to decide about a fifth movie. I'm still the same age Harry is, and I haven't actually grown that much.

Fans are really important for me. And if they take pains to write me, it's the minimum that I answer myself.

I think I'm highly normal. I'm attending school after acting, I'm going out with friends, going to the cinema - I'm just doing everything a normal teenager does. People think I can't leave the house without being in a crowd of fans - but that's not true. I'm able to do more things than people might think.

I'm thrilled of the acceptance I get abroad. The people are so hearty, warm and grateful and I feel privileged having seen so many countries and some of the greatest monuments.

When I get into trouble at school I'd like to take an invisibility cloak, drape it over me and sneak out the door. Or I'd like to have a 3-headed-dog because then no one would argue with me.

I played a trick on the make-up department where I put a fake blood capsule in my mouth, pretended to trip on the stairs and let the blood come out of my mouth. They really fell for it, then they chased after me with a water pistol.

Everyone on the set has a mobile phone, and I found by pushing a few buttons, they could be programmed into different languages. I fixed Robbie's (Coltrane) to speak in Turkish.

I don't understand girls, but I'm slowly learning.

[on saying that he'll do all of the Harry Potter movies] Ultimately, it comes down to whether we're still enjoying it. If we are then I think we would be sort of stupid not to do them. As long as I'm doing other stuff around the same time, I think it'll be fine. Also, I sort of try to read the books when they come out impartially and not make up my mind, but the fact is when I was reading the sixth, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there were bits in there where I was going, "God, I would love to do that because it's so good.".

[on whether he is religious] I'm not a religious person. My mom was of Jewish blood and my dad was Protestant... I'm very interested in religion as something to study, but I'm not a religious person in the slightest.

I didn't look at the nudity and go, oh great. But it's the same as doing a role with an accent or a particular affectation. You look at the character first. Lots of the actors that I've admired have at one stage or another taken their kit off. It's a rite of passage. That iconic scene is the physical and emotional climax of the play. So if I do that with pants on, it would be crap.

I feel okay about my body. Not totally, of course, no one my age does... but I've gone to the gym to make sure. And many of the actors I admire, like Gary Oldman, have gone naked.

People will always remember Harry, but I think if I work hard enough other characters will stick in their minds as well.

[on the "Equus" paparazzi]: They were outside the theatre every single night, but we came up with a cunning ruse. I would wear the same outfit every time - a different T-shirt underneath, but I'd wear the same jacket and zip it up so they couldn't see what I was wearing underneath, and the same hat. So they could take pictures for six months, but it would look like the same day, so they (photos) became unpublishable. Which was hilarious, because there's nothing better than seeing paparazzi getting really frustrated.

What everybody would love to see is me having ditched school and then just going wild. That's what I'm determined not to give them.

It's not so much that they don't want me to grow up. It's that they're annoyed that I'm growing up adjusted. They'd much rather I was growing up and going wild and crashing cars.

I'm lucky enough to have a job that I love, and a relatively down-to-earth life.

[on being bullied in school] Some people did get very aggressive. People say it was just jealousy, but I don't think it is jealousy. I think it's just "We can have a crack at the kid who plays Harry Potter." As Eddie Izzard says, these people always hang about in fives, because these people have a fifth of a personality each.

I hate celebrity culture but I'm unavoidably part of it. These people are celebrities as a by-product of what they do. People read every little thing about Peter Andre and Katie Price and I couldn't care less. They don't want to work, have no interests, no passions, nothing and yet they seem to be held up on pedestals. I don't think they should be trying to push themselves onto us. It does annoy me of course, but I'm part of it.

[on quitting drinking alcohol]: I became so reliant on (alcohol) to enjoy stuff. There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person's lifestyle that really isn't suited to me. As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time - that doesn't work for me. I do that very unsuccessfully. I'd just rather sit at home and read, or go out to dinner with someone, or talk to someone I love, or talk to somebody that makes me laugh.

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.".

We like tearing down our own in England. If you look at what happened to Ken Branagh in the 1990s: all of the newspapers built him up, the new Olivier, and then destroyed him and his personal life. Not that I have been treated that badly, but I think a lot of people would like to write that story.

[on receiving the script for The Woman in Black (2012)] It was a page-turner. What I liked about it was that it was a horror film, but it was unusual for a horror film to be so character-driven, to have such deep and affecting themes - themes of loss and what happens when we fail to move on from the loss.

[on occasionally being drunk while impersonating Harry Potter] I can point to many scenes where I am just gone. Dead behind the eyes.

I don't have an entourage in my personal life. I get driven here and I get driven home, but that's it. I hate that kind of dropping-a-name-to-get-a-table stuff. Maybe it's an English thing that there's some sort of embarrassment saying, "Hello, I'm Daniel Radcliffe, does that make a difference to you?".

[on many parents' objecting to The Woman in Black (2012)] I do take a small tincture of pride about it being the most complained-about film. I would have thought from the trailer that you could see what kind of a movie it was going to be. I said at the time, if your kid is under twelve I would advise them not to see this film. Apparently, there was a girl at the British premiere who fainted and when I heard that, I was like "We did something right.".

I'm scared of any sort of expression looking like a Harry expression, and so I think that the journey for me in the last year is kind of about acceptance, of going, "This is my face and it was also the face that played Harry Potter.".

[on whether he identifies as Jewish] Absolutely. I really do. My dad is Northern Irish and my mum is Jewish. That's working blood. Though I am not religious in the least, I am very proud to be Jewish.

[on rumors he was going to play Freddie Mercury in a biopic] There is no truth to it at all. It's one of those very, very funny things: it came out of a story in the Daily Star and then you see newspapers like The Guardian using The Star as their source, and it grows and grows [until] it's "Dan Radcliffe is playing Freddie Mercury!", which I was never going to do. Everyone on the Internet who I presume is saying I'm totally wrong for that part is correct. I AM completely wrong for that part!

I don't have Twitter and I don't have Facebook and I think that makes things a lot easier, because if you go on Twitter and tell everybody what you're doing moment to moment and then claim you want a private life, then no one is going to take that request seriously.

[on shooting What If (2013) in Dublin, Ireland] Dublin looks awesome; it's not hard to make Dublin look really pretty but it looks great in the movie.

I like action movies and I feel there used to be lots of really witty ones, like Die Hard (1988) and Lethal Weapon (1987) and the Bourne movies, but the good ones are few and far between now.

I used to be self-conscious about my height, but then I thought, fuck that, I'm Harry Potter.

I'm 5-foot-5, and I'll wear a big parka and put the hood up, and nobody gives me a second glance.

There's this idea that Emma Watson, Rupert and myself are the best of friends who always hang out together. I'm just going to put [it] out there - Emma and I text all the time but Rupert and I never text each other, we never see each other. If I see him every six months or so, it's a friendly "Hello, how's things with you?" But that's about it.