Daniel Radcliffe talks his evolving acting career in August Man

Harry Potter actors Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) and Matthew Lewis (Neville) grace the covers of magazines and talk about their careers.

A couple of Harry Potter actors are playing the role of coverboy this month. We’ve got the info.

First, Daniel Radcliffe gives a wide-ranging interview in men’s lifestyle magazine August Man. As the magazine points out, not all child actors make a smooth transition into a adulthood. Happily, Radcliffe is bucking the trend. “I think I’ve just been very lucky,” he said. “I’ve always had just really good people around me who are never going let me get a big ego or anything like that.”

"I think it’s also because I didn’t do it in LA; I sort of did it all in London, where I’m from, so that makes quite a difference. LA is a very specific world. I think if you had grown up there as a kid, it would definitely have shaped you in a different way."

Radcliffe has definitely forged his own path since the final movie in the Harry Potter series debuted in 2011. (The first one came out in 2001, when Radcliffe was 12. Basically, Radcliffe spent his entire adolescence on film sets.) He’s gone off the beaten path, appearing in independent movies like Horns, where he plays a man who sprouts frightening-looking horns overnight. And in his latest movie, Swiss Army Man, he plays a farting corpse. Why does he choose these kinds of roles?

"I think that tends to be where the more challenging scripts are. At the moment that’s where the film industry is, it’s that people are less willing to risk money on something that’s not a sure-fire success. So I think the most challenging and interesting movies are often being made in the independent world, though not always the case. On the whole, I gravitate towards that stuff but that’s not to say that I don’t want to keep a mixture of both in my career, which would be the most ideal. It just happens that at the moment I’m just going to go where the scripts and projects that I find most exciting are, and they happen to be in the indie film world."

Having said that, Radcliffe has also done a fair amount of theater. He’s appeared in shows like Equus, debuted on Broadway in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and is currently starring in in Privacy, about the problems of keeping things private in the digital world. He doesn’t seem to think it necessary to choose between theater and film.

"I enjoy both immensely and want to continue doing both for a long time. I think theatre has a slightly different discipline. There are certain things you need to do differently technically, but generally speaking, you’re always going for the same goal―honesty and truth, and just being as realistic as possible."

I’m glad Radcliffe is spreading himself around as an actor. It feels like he’s establishing a foundation on which he can build a long career.

Next: New images from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them show mayhem

Meanwhile, Matthew Lewis is the “Man of the Month” in The Manuel by PHOENIX. (The phoenix connection is appropriate, for obvious reasons.)

Like Radcliffe, Lewis is also doing theater at the moment. He’s in a play called Unfaithful, playing through October in London. You can download the September issue of The Manuel for $1.99 here.