LOS ANGELES, Oct 21 ― Daniel Radcliffe is opening up about the struggles and challenges he’s faced in a recent interview for Playboy’s November issue.
The “Harry Potter” star revealed how camera phones played a role in his drinking problem. “Any time I’d go out to dance, camera phones would come out. That would make me very self-conscious, and what’s the easiest way to escape being self-conscious? Alcohol is a quick way of doing that. So it was related in that way.”
Radcliffe also revealed that of all eight “Harry Potter” movies, there’s one that makes him cringe: “The Half-Blood Prince”.
“In every movie up to the sixth one, you can see a big step forward in my acting. And then it stopped, or went backward maybe, in the sixth film. I really enjoyed my performance in the fifth — part of it was how much I worked with people like Gary Oldman and David Thewlis.
“On the sixth, I remember watching it and thinking, Wow, there’s been no growth. You’re watching a mistake you made every day for 11 months — that’s the way I saw it. I had the idea that Harry was like a soldier traumatised by war, and as a result of that, he shuts down emotionally. That’s not a bad idea, but it’s not the most interesting thing to watch for two and a half hours.”
Radcliffe also spoke to his experience growing up with the franchise, having been just 12 when the first film released.
“I’ve seen kids on set who are bored, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing? This is the best place on Earth’,” Radcliffe added. “I loved it from the word go. I loved being on set. I loved the hours. I loved the people. I loved the crazy, weird s**t I got to do every day. Acting was the focus for me, and I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardise being an actor.”
The actor also responded to a question by Playboy about masturbation by explaining that he always tried to stay focused at work.
“Yeah, I was like every other teenager in that sense… But not when I was on set. I wasn’t going, ‘When is Alan Rickman going to nail this scene so I can run back to my trailer?’,” he said. “It would have been embarrassing to walk back on set and look the dignitaries of British acting royalty in the eye, knowing what I’d been doing.”
