Radcliffe Embarks On Life Without Potter

Source: AAP, 26th November 2005

Teenage British actor Daniel Radcliffe is enjoying not being Harry Potter.

He is enjoying it so much he was tempted to ring an Adelaide newspaper hotline to join a hunt for himself.

Radcliffe, 16, has a role in December Boys, a low budget Australian drama now being shot in the South Australia capital. He chose it because it was the polar opposite to playing Harry Potter.

An extra bonus for him is the fact he's practically anonymous as he goes about Adelaide.

"There has been a bit of speculation about where I am physically in the city, which has been quite funny," he told AAP. "Apparently there was a (newspaper) hotline to try and find out where I was.

"I was just really tempted to ring it and see what they did.

"It's just funny.

"It's not so much that I think 'oh, why are people doing this' it's just bizarre and strange and funny.

"I have actually been recognised more as (Lord of the Rings star) Elijah Wood than I have as me, which is a compliment."

Apart from the fun side of his non-Harry role, Radcliffe is weighing his future career prospects on how he does in December Boys.

"Ultimately it comes down to whether everyone else will want to see me, be able to see me, as another character," Radcliffe said. "It's partly up to me because I have got to give a really good performance.

"And it's partly up to the people who go and see the film because it's up to them to go to it with an open mind and don't think 'I'm going to see the film where the guy playing Harry Potter is in it'.

"As long as they go to it just seeing it as a film, then I don't think it will be a problem at all."

In his first movie since 2001 apart from the Harry Potter blockbusters, Radcliffe plays an orphan in the Rod Hardy-directed movie, now being shot around Adelaide.

"It's weird for me coming from Harry Potter," Radcliffe said. "Here, we're doing four or five scenes a day - that's unreal, on Harry Potter you get about four or five shots on a pretty good day.

"To work at this pace is one of the hardest things for me."

Radcliffe carefully chose the role to distance himself from his previous movies.

"It was a character that was really different from Harry and that was the thing that I always wanted to do, so it instantly appealed to me," he said.

But he's not completely breaking from the mold.

"I don't think it would be ever be something that I would be really focussing on," he said. "If I was focussing on just breaking away from Harry, I would probably give a really bad performance because I wouldn't be focussing on the character that I was actually having to play.

"You can't say am I enjoying it more or less.

"It's great to do something different and in that way I am really, really enjoying it."