Daniel Radcliffe
From Philosopedia
Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (23 July 1989 - )
Radcliffe, an actor who played the role of Harry Potter in the first five films based upon J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, is the only child of Alan Radcliffe, an International Creative Management (ICM) literary agent and Marcia Jacobson Gresham, a casting agent. He was born in Queen Charlotte's Hospital, West London, England, attended the all-boys Sussex House School. In 2006, he sat his Advanced Levels (first year college exams) in English literature, history, and religion and philosophy. He received "A" in the first three but decided not to continue.
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The Wizard
Appearing in small school productions as a young boy, in 1999 he landed a television part as the young David Copperfield in David Copperfield. In 2001 he landed a role as the son of Harry and Louisa Pendel in The Tailor of Panama, in which were Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis suggested to Radcliffe's mother that he should try out for the role of Harry Potter himself, and in 2001 director Chris Columbus cast him as Potter in The Sorcerer's Stone that opened on 16 November 2001. His performance received critical acclaim, and he appeared in its 2002 sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, followed in 2004 by Prisoner of Azkaban and in 2005 by Goblet of Fire (2005).
Radcliffe in 2006 filmed December Boys in Australia, followed in 2007 by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
He had tried reading the first Harry Potter book when he was eight but was unable to finish the book. It was only when cast in the lead role did he finally read the entire book.
Equus
Equus by Peter Shaffer is a two-act play written in 1973 that tells of a psychiatrist's fascination with a teenage boy who has a mythopoeic obsession with horses. In short, he is torn between choosing the "equine" or the "jesus." The boy's father is an atheist, his mother a devout Christian who makes him read to her from the Bible. Furious about the Bible's violent scenes, he destroys a picture of the Crucifixion that had been hung at the foot of the boy's bed. The boy replaces the picture with one of a horse that has large, staring eyes. In one scene, the boy is shown to be erotically fixated on Nugget (Equus), taking the horse for a midnight ride bareback and naked, enacting how he as a king on the godhead Equus leads the two to destroy their enemies.
The plot involves psychiatrist Martin Dysart, who tells how he rehabilitates a 17-year-old stable boy, Alan Strang, who had been arrested for blinding six horses. The boy's conflict, he finds, entails his father's atheism and voyeurism and his mother's secretive religious devotion. When a girl tries to seduce him, Alan is impotent in the presence of the horses, so he blinds them in a fit of uncontrolled anger and guilt. Dysart comes to regret having treated the boy successfully, regretting that Alan now seems to have been robbed of his creative vitality.
The play originally was staged at London's Old Vic in 1973, starring Alec McCowen as Dysrt and Peter Firth as Alan. Later Alan was played by Tom Hulce and Dysart byAnthony Perkins, who was replaced by Richard Burton and then resumed by Perkins.
Richard Burton and Peter Firth were in a 1977 film that was directed by Sidney Lumet, a work heaving criticized by animal rights activists because the horses were abused so violently.
On Broadway, Equus opened on 24 October 1974 and played to 2 October 1977, starring Anthony Hopkins as Dysart and Peter Firth as Alan. In 1975 it won a Tony for being best play.
The play was revived in 2008 with Richard Griffiths as Dysart and Radcliffe in his Broadway debut as Alan.
On opening night of Equus in London, Radcliffe was quoted as saying that his nerves caused him an embarrassing problem on the opening night: "You tighten up like a hamster. The first time it happened, I turned around and went, 'You know, there's a thousand people here and I don't think even one of them would expect you to look your best in this situation.' " But he was not that uncomfortable, adding, "It never really was an issue. I don't know why, it probably should have been. I am terribly self-conscious. Although I remember I did look at my dad once and say, 'Do you think I could wear pants?'. . . . If I went off and did another fantasy film, everyone would say, 'He's not even trying,' but if I went off and played a drug dealer, they'd say, 'God, he's trying way too hard. . . .It's also the fact that the character is very different from Harry, a very violent character - he's mentally unstable, that's the long and short of it."
On being nude, Radcliffe has said, "I feel OK 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. . . . 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."
A humanities humanist, Radcliffe when 19 years old wrote poetry under the pen-name Jacob Gershon, four works that appeared in an underground fashion magazine. In an interview with the Guardian, he said,
- "I didn't want to publish it under my name. It's the kind of thing I look back on and just think, 'Ahhh!' As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions. There is an art to a short story. I love Raymond Carver and Chekhov – without making myself sound more highbrow than I am! When I don't write in form and metre, I become unbearably self-indulgent. It's what Robert Frost said: free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."
- The verses are about infidelity, Pop Idol and Kate Moss's former boyfriend, the singer Pete Doherty. One of the four, "Away Days," details the narrator's affairs with prostitutes, conducted while his unsuspecting wife and son believe he is away on business. Another critiques Simon Cowell and the queues of "deluded" hopefuls who line up to compete in TV talent contests. He also wrote one on attempting to seduce a woman.
- The collection was published in November 2007 in Rubbish magazine, an annual publication with a circulation of 3,000 which describes itself as "a playful platform for fashionable people". Introducing Radcliffe's verses, it says it is "proudly debuting the work of Jacob Gershon, 17, a very exciting and dynamic young poet". A spokesman for the magazine said: "Poetry is a key aspect to Rubbish, so it was fantastic to be able to provide the platform for 'Jacob' and his debut work."
Radcliffe's sexual orientation is straight. As the photograph shows, he is not circumcised.
Atheism
"My mum was of Jewish blood and my Dad was Protestant," Radcliffe told The Today Show (December 2006) in Australia. "I'm very interested in religion as something to study. But I'm not a religious person in the slightest."
In a 4 July 2009 interview with Anita Singh, Radcliffe talked of having become an uncool kid that has come out on top:
- "I wasn't the most popular kid in school," said Radcliffe, who tried to give as good as he got. "Because I'd been on set with some really genuinely witty people over the last few years, I could turn round to these idiots and at least try and tear them apart. They didn't like that. I'm not saying I was Oscar Wilde at 14, but I had a line for anything they could throw at me.
- "I'd never been one of the cool kids [but] you realise that all the kids who were really cool at your school were actually scuzzy and horrible and boring. The nerds are the ones that make the films and do loads of other really cool stuff in their life."
- On one occasion, Radcliffe found himself in a fight with an "incredibly unpleasant" boy five years his senior. "There'd been a bit of animosity between us already and he was being really horrible to a kid I knew, so I pulled him off this other bloke and he threw me into the lockers. Then I think I said something to him and he punched me in the face. Then I punched him back. In films it always looks really cool, but I was hair-pulling, biting - there was nothing elegant or macho about the whole affair. I thought, 'You know what? If you're quick enough to run away, then that's what you should do'."
In the interview Singh added that Radcliffe appears in the August 2009 issue of Esquire, where he goes on record as being a non-believer:
- In an interview with Esquire magazine, Radcliffe risked the US box office prospects of the new Harry Potter film by declaring himself to be an atheist. In a pronouncement that will dismay America's religious Right, which has long voiced suspicions about Potter's "anti-Christian" message, the 19-year-old actor said he did not believe in God.
- He also expressed his admiration for Professor Richard Dawkins, the prominent atheist and bete noir of Evangelical Christians.
- Radcliffe has been reticent on the subject of religion in the past, but in an interview to promote the latest instalment in the film franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, released on July 15, he said: "I'm an atheist, but I'm very relaxed about it. I don't preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do. Anything he does on television, I will watch."
- He joked: "There we go, Dan, that's half of America that's not going to see the next Harry Potter film on the back of that comment."
- JK Rowling's stories of the schoolboy wizard are taken very seriously by some Evangelical Christians in the United States. One of the largest Christian groups in the country, Focus on the Family, denounced the books as "witchcraft". Conversely, the Church of England published a guide advising youth leaders to use Harry Potter to spread the Christian message, as the characters face "struggles and dilemmas that are familiar to us all".
- Prof Dawkins, author of best-selling book The God Delusion, is no fan of Harry Potter, once remarking that tales of witchcraft are "anti-scientific".
Personal
The Sun (8 Nov 2007, UK) and other journals have reported that although Radcliffe (18) has dated Dubliner Laura O'Toole, 22, for several months, the two are just good friends. They met while playing opposite roles in Equus when they both performed nude sex scenes.
