Daniel Radcliffe talks intelligently about dealing with early fame, managing money, and the importance of being comfortable in your own skin.
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe recently gave an interview to the Mirror. But before we get into the meat of it, I have to quote this opening line:
"Daniel Radcliffe has earned a fair few Quidditch in his time but, he reveals, has hardly spent any of it."
“A fair few Quidditch…”
Okay, now that we’ve all absorbed that, the point is sound. Despite having amassed a fortune of roughly $94 million, Radcliffe is mostly content to let it sit there.
"I don’t really do anything with my money. I’m very grateful for it, because having money means you don’t have to worry about it, which is a very lovely freedom to have. It also gives me immense freedom career-wise."
He might not buy anything elaborate, but it sounds like his money is giving him peace of mind and the freedom to do what he wants, which beats mansions and sports cars and whatever any day.
"For all the people who’ve followed my career, I want to give them something to be interested in, rather than just make loads of money on c**p films for the rest of my life."
I honestly do not know what swear word has been starred out above. Is it something British?
In any case, Radcliffe has certainly gone off the beaten path so far as his movie career is concerned. Rather than seek out blockbusters, he’s appeared in quirky arthouse dramas like Horns, Kill Your Darlings, and Swiss Army Man, where he plays a farting corpse.
Image: Swiss Army Man/A24
Another obscure Daniel Radcliffe project that doesn’t get talked about enough: A Young Doctor’s Notebook. Seriously, it is incredibly disturbing. Look it up on Netflix sometime and go on the trip of a lifetime.
But after spending most of his life in the movie industry, Radcliffe—who’s still just 27—has earned the right to do what he wants. He’s developed what sounds like a great outlook on fame and Hollywood that will no doubt serve him well.
"Ultimately, the hardest thing about growing up in the spotlight, it’s not the easy access to drugs or the strange, sort of pandering world you enter into. The difficulty is trying to work out who you are while constantly coming up against a perception of yourself that everybody else already has. I think it’s very important, especially when you become famous young, to work out who you are without fame and without that as part of your identity, because that will go. Fame does not last forever. For anyone."
Whether you like his post-Harry Potter work or not, that’s just a smart way of looking at things.
Next: New writing by J.K. Rowling is up
And it doesn’t look like Radcliffe is slowing down. He’s next appearing in Imperium, where he plays an FBI agent who goes undercover as a neo-Nazi. It’s yet another left turn for the actor, but that’s becoming the norm for him.
"If someone told me tomorrow, ‘You’re never going back on set’, I really wouldn’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I don’t know what my life looks like without regularly being on a film set. I’d go crazy. I’m one of the lucky few who loves my job."
Finally, somehow, the idea of how Radcliffe wants to die came up.
"On a film set, ideally. I want to ruin someone’s day. I want to have them suddenly go, ‘Dan’s just dropped dead in front of the camera; we have to get his double on’."
As long as you’re enjoying yourself.