Read an Excerpt
Daniel Radcliffe
The Biography
By Sue Blackhall John Blake Publishing Ltd
Copyright © 2014 Sue Blackhall
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78418-241-0
CHAPTER 1
THE MAGIC BEGINS
Daniel has used the word 'lucky' many times in reference to his getting the iconic role. He has also said that by chance he happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was on a night out in 1999 with his parents in the London audience at the play Stones in His Pockets, where Potter producer David Heyman and screenwriter Steve Kloves were sitting several rows in front. Heyman was already known to Daniel's parents, as his mother, Norma Heyman, was a client of literary agent Alan Radcliffe. During the interlude, Heyman introduced himself, omitting any mention of the new project, a film adaptation of J. K. Rowling's hugely successful series of boy wizard books that was already in preproduction in October 1999. Or so the story goes.
In fact, upon seeing Daniel at the theatre, Heyman had made a surreptitious call to director Chris Columbus, who was now panicking because the perfect Potter had still not been found so close to the start of filming, to tell him that by amazing coincidence he had stumbled across the boy who had made such an impression in the BBC two-part drama David Copperfield. Columbus urged Heyman to make contact, leaving Daniel bemused at the garbled conversations between the grown-ups. 'I had this feeling that my parents were keeping me out of the loop, somehow,' he said. 'All I could think about was why this guy had been staring at me.'
At one point, Daniel was ushered behind a theatre column with his parents seemingly talking in some secret code about something he knew nothing about. In fact, the complete story is that, when the casting crew were looking around for their Harry Potter, Columbus had watched Daniel in a video of David Copperfield. He has always been irked about the myth of David Heyman seeing Daniel at the theatre, turning round and happening upon Harry Potter. Columbus said: 'That story drives me crazy. It's only part of it. We had a casting director who would bring in hundreds and hundreds of kids every week and I'd look at all these videotapes submitted from all over England but we never really found the right boy.'
The search lasted for nine months and around sixteen thousand children were seen. There are reports that one casting director actually lost their job amid the desperation to find the right boy. It was watching the Copperfield video that made Columbus think that at last they had the perfect Potter child actor. 'I became enchanted with the kid and told the casting director that we had to see him. He had that haunted quality we were looking for. I couldn't get his image out of my mind.' The immediate response he received was that because of the reluctance of Daniel's parents it would never happen. The casting search continued until one day a frustrated Columbus threw the video on his desk and demanded in frustration, 'This is what I want! This is the kid. Just bring him to me.'
With a new two-film contract in place, Daniel's parents eventually relented and let him audition. 'To the Radcliffes' credit,' said Columbus, 'they were totally aware of the enormity of the project and were not going to make this decision lightly. We made it very clear to them that we would protect their son.'
It was the experience Columbus had had with child actors that secured him the directing role in the first place. He had not been first choice. The job was originally offered to Steven Spielberg who actually worked for a few months on the project with Steve Kloves but later withdrew after disagreeing with Jo Rowling's insistence on an all-British cast. Spielberg was later to say, 'I just felt I wasn't ready to make an all-kids movie and my kids thought I was crazy. And the books were by that time popular so, when I dropped out, I knew it was going to be a phenomenon. But you know, I don't make films because they're gonna be a phenomenon.'
In another interview, he was to go even further, saying, 'I purposely didn't do the Harry Potter movie because, for me, that was shooting ducks in a barrel. It's just a slam dunk. It's just like withdrawing a billion dollars and putting it into your personal bank accounts. There's no challenge.'
Fate, it seemed, was to play a huge part in Daniel's future, for Spielberg had also wanted to hire young American actor Haley Joel Osment, who already had a number of films behind him including Forrest Gump and The Sixth Sense, as Harry Potter. Another American boy star, Liam Aiken from Stepmom, was also said at one time to be up for the part.
Other names for the director's job included Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame, Jonathan Demme who directed The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, and Brad Silberling (City of Angels and Casper). But fortunately for Daniel, Columbus was taken on – and Columbus knew exactly who he wanted, despite what he described as an 'intense' process. 'There were times when we felt we would never find an individual who embodied the complex spirit and depth of Harry Potter. Then Dan walked into the room and we all knew we had found Harry.'
And there was someone else who also thought Daniel would be perfect for the part and had recommended him – Maggie Smith, who had been greatly impressed by him when she acted alongside him as Aunt Betsey Trotwood in Copperfield. 'I owe her big,' Daniel was to say many years later. So it was a kind of staged fate – the meeting at the theatre that night combined with a series of fortuitous events – that was to turn Daniel into one of the world's most famous stars.
Daniel got the call for a more formal meeting followed by three auditions and a series of screen tests. He said he entered them all with little confidence but a lot of hope. 'My parents told me to believe in myself but they also said not to get my hopes up too much because I could end up really disappointed.'
He had every reason to be cautious because the cast hunt for Harry Potter was hugely publicised, with new names in the frame for the title role being mooted every day. But he was slowly getting there. In one crucial five-minute screen test he had to express a range of emotions from pleasure to gravity including performing a poignant Harry Potter speech – 'Do you know what I hear? I can hear my mum screaming and pleading with Voldemort and if you heard your mum screaming about to be killed you wouldn't forget in a hurry' – being one of the lines from it.
Columbus put Daniel on the spot by deliberately fumbling his own lines to see how he would cope. In the clip, at the time of writing still on YouTube (under 'Daniel's Radcliffe's first audition'), Daniel is still literally very much the hesitant and natural blue-eyed boy. (He was to remain just that, as he developed an allergy to the green contact lenses he was initially asked to wear to match the eye colour of Rowling's wizard. The idea of digitally altering the colour was brought up but it would have been a time-consuming process and so, with Rowling's agreement, the screen Harry Potter had blue eyes.) A shy Daniel is seen donning several pairs of dark-rimmed owlish spectacles handed to him before Columbus announces 'perfect' to the pair that were to become the Potter trademark.
Another enchanting screen test has Daniel talking about a dragon's egg and after one false start the play-acting going well. The films were shown to Jo Rowling who, some ten years later, was to admit to Daniel that she found it very moving. 'At the time I didn't have a son of my own and watching you made me feel like I did.' She was also to admit that initially she wasn't happy with the three child stars being so good looking, expecting the roles to go to more 'geekish' kids 'But then I just thought to myself, "Well, this is film",' she added.
Daniel has said he was in the bath one night a week or so later, musing about how he stood little chance against the thousands of kids who had made a bid for this major role when the phone rang. 'I heard my dad say, "Hello, David". David Heyman was the only David I knew at the time so I was pretty sure it was him. Dad came upstairs and I thought it was going to be a let- down call to say I didn't get the part. But he came upstairs and told me. I just sat there for a while to let it sink in. It never really did. Then I just started to cry because I was so happy. There are no words for it really. I just sat there, wiped out for a while.' It was he said a 'life-defining moment'.
As a special treat that night, Daniel was allowed to stay up a bit longer than normal and watch an episode of Fawlty Towers. But it was anything but a normal night for him. 'I tried to sleep but woke up at 2am and then woke Mum and Dad too. I asked them, "Is it real? Am I dreaming?"' It was no dream and, as was to be said at the time, 'Daniel Radcliffe is about to embark on the ride of a lifetime.' Harry Potter was about to be launched on the world.
But Daniel and his young co-stars, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, were at this time just kids who had been chosen for a film, which might or might not be successful. The world did not even know their names but, within twenty minutes of the cast announcement, Daniel had a large press gathering outside his house. And Daniel's friends only found out about his major new role after seeing him on the news – he was too shy to telephone any of them and tell them himself. Daniel recalled of their first-ever photo-shoot with top photographer Terry O'Neill: 'I was referred to as "the boy with glasses", Rupert as "the other boy" and Emma as "the girl" throughout the whole thing. But that was fair enough. Why should anyone have known our names?'
The result of the session was a selection of charming photographs of three what now seem such very young and innocent children – Emma and Rupert were both aged eleven – almost bewildered by being shot into the spotlight. The captions listed their names and added they were 'best friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry'. Making an 'official' statement about the new stars, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, then the president of worldwide theatrical production at Warner Bros. said, 'We searched through all Muggle and Wizard households to find just the right young people to play Harry, Ron and Hermione and we have found them in Dan, Rupert and Emma. These are magical roles, the kind that come around once in a lifetime and they required talented children who can bring magic to the screen.'
Daniel, Emma and Rupert were hidden away at London's Landmark Hotel for three days before a press conference on 23 August 2000. It was only really when he attended this that Daniel realised 'this was going to be quite a big deal really'. He looks back now and calls it a 'mad day'. There was a plea to the gathered press to remember that 'these are considerably younger than the actors you normally fire questions at so please respect that'. The three children were introduced as they walked through the door, the last time anyone would ever need to introduce them: 'This is Rupert, this is Daniel and this is Emma,' and then the cameras flashed as they sat together on the arm of a chair. David Heyman read out a statement from Jo Rowling: 'Having seen Daniel Radcliffe's screen test I don't think Chris Columbus could have found a better Harry.'
From that day on, Heyman was to be like a proud father of the trio. He still has a photograph that he took in 2000 of a little Daniel and a little Rupert walking together and getting to know one another. It was taken on the day the boys met for the very first time – the day that Heyman knew it was all going to work out. 'While we were alternatively amused and bemused by the rumours about what we were doing,' he said, 'we were overjoyed to finally put them to rest. They were tremendously talented British kids who would bring so much to the film.'
Now, on press conference day, looking cute and very, very young, Daniel, wearing those trademark glasses, was facing his first press throng and answering questions. Soon the world would know his name, but on this debut appearance he was wrongly captioned as Daniel Radford in BBC coverage of the conference. In reference to Harry's pet snowy owl Hedwig, Daniel said, 'I think I am a tiny, tiny bit like Harry – because I'd like to have an owl.' He was not 'top of the form at school' and said neither was he a 'goody two-shoes'. He had no idea what he would do with the money he earned from this film.
Rather unkind journalists wanted to make the point that a little boy who had probably never even read Harry Potter had won such a role. Daniel had to admit he had read the first two books 'a long time ago' but had forgotten the stories. He later confessed, 'I found it really hard to get into them. I couldn't get into any books when I was that age. A lot of the other boys in my class know I've read the first one or two and they've read all of them and they're a bit angry because I have read the least Harry Potter books.' He was put on the spot as to just how much he knew about the books when asked if he knew the real name of Voldemort. 'Rupert was trying to help me and wrote the answer down on a bit of paper and slid it to me. We thought we were being really subtle and clever but of course we were seen. It was then I realised I had to read the books.'
In fact, by the time filming began, Daniel was on his fourth Harry Potter book. 'There was a lot of swotting up,' he confessed. He admitted that initially he wasn't quite sure whether he could get to grips with 'this poor kid' Harry but became obsessed with him after reading the books, one straight after the other. Then there was no stopping him and by the time filming began he was well into the character. 'Despite having been filming as him all day I would charge around my hotel room in Newcastle where we were filming the scenes with the broom; the shot where it leaps into my hand. We would be doing all that stuff and I would be going back to my hotel room at night and having hand fights with nobody. I could have done with a brother to play with.'
Daniel is self-effacing about being chosen as the famous boy wizard. He believed that he, pretty Emma, who would play Hermione Granger, and ginger-haired Rupert, Ron Weasley, the three kids who would be become eternally linked with Harry Potter, were chosen because they had the right look more than for their acting potential. 'I still feel that because they were so close to starting filming that I was chosen out of a mix of desperation too.'
Daniel was the last of the child star trio to be chosen for the role. It is incredible now to know that he had very nearly missed out at the last minute. For young actor Tom Felton was screen tested too and got so close to being Harry Potter that he was told to dye his blond hair dark, put on Potter glasses and read for the part. But it was seeing the chemistry between Dan, Emma and Rupert together in their screen test – despite Daniel later saying he sounded like he was on helium – that had convinced Columbus he now had the perfect line-up. Relegated from the lead role, Tom won the part of Harry's schoolboy rival Draco Malfoy.
For Columbus, directing three school kids in such a major project could have been daunting, although he had worked with children before on Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire. He now had to get a fresh batch through the two twelve-month shoots involved in the first two Potter films he directed before being succeeded by Alfonso Cuarón (though he was to work as a producer on the 2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).
Daniel later praised Columbus, saying, 'I don't think anybody but Chris with his indefatigable enthusiasm and zeal could have done that job; zeal which he passed on to me. And he made every day fun so I never felt that sense of pressure.'
There were always, of course, Daniel's parents keeping a close watch in the background. They instilled in him that, having been given such a golden opportunity at such a young age, he had to deal with it in a mature way, not be the little boy with the big I am attitude. 'My parents said to me that if I did start acting up on set another boy could always be found,' Daniel explained. 'It wasn't harsh; it was the truth. Any actor who thinks he is irreplaceable is wrong. You are not. I was aware that getting a part like that at my age also meant they could get someone else to take over. It is something anyone going into the profession needs to know.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Daniel Radcliffe by Sue Blackhall. Copyright © 2014 Sue Blackhall. Excerpted by permission of John Blake Publishing Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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