Daniel Radcliffe: From Hogwarts to Hollywood

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[This is a guest post by Spencer Blohm, a freelance entertainment and pop culture blogger]

Our favorite Harry Potter star just recently turned 24, and while he has repeatedly stated that he would not return to the role of the boy wizard, he has also hinted that he’s not opposed to the prospect of playing Harry Potter’s father, James. There’s no doubt Daniel would be more than up to the task -in previous films he’s already briefly played Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) and of course  each of the “seven Potters,” during Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. The scene, during which Daniel performed near perfect imitations of Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Fleur Delacour and Mundungus Fletcher, took 96 takes to shoot. After that ambitious task, emulating James Potter should be effortless for Daniel.

Daniel, who has been mentioning the potential of a “James appearance”  for years, may not have realized how quickly that opportunity might arise. At the London premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, J.K. Rowling told a reporter that she would likely never write another book with Harry as the central character, however, a prequel following the trials and tribulations of Lord Voldemort (Tom Riddle) may be in the works. And we’re all aware that Voldemort and James Potter do meet, quite violently, in their later years.

But what will the beloved real life Potter do in the meantime? He has been spending a lot of time on stage, first with Equus (2007) and then How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (2011). Currently he’s performing in The Cripple of Inishmaan. Oddly enough, in The Cripple Daniel plays an orphaned boy, desperate to escape poverty. Sounds familiar, except that as a young wizard Daniel was supernaturally gifted, and in The Cripple of Inishmaan, Daniel is the opposite -physically disabled.

He’s also appeared in increasingly serious and controversial film roles, such as his current role in Kill Your Darlings, arriving in theaters soon, in which he plays the gay poet Allen Ginsberg. Daniel is also expected to reclaim his role in the second season of A Young Doctor’s Notebook as the conflicted, often tormented doctor working in Russia during the 1917 Revolution. Daniel has chosen his scripts with remarkable instinct, Kill Your Darlings was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and A Young Doctor’s Notebook quickly became Sky Arts channel’s most watched television show with 800,000 viewers in the UK.

With numerous critically acclaimed, mature roles piling up, it makes sense that Daniel would shy away from returning to Hogwarts. He told Time Out London, “I’ve done so much work to establish myself as something outside that series I’d be really hesitant to go back. Even if they were set later in time. I’m 23, which is too old to be running round in a schoolboy’s cape... No, I can’t get away with that any more, I’d just look foolish.”

He has a point, it would be more detrimental to the image of Harry Potter if audiences were to see an adult Daniel attempting to recreate the magic of the first eight films; it would be better to let the young Harry remain unblemished (and without a five o’clock shadow) in our minds. But still, we can never fully let go of the possibility of Daniel’s reemergence, if only for a few moments. And it seems neither can Daniel: “I’d never totally close the door for the reason that Jo’s a great writer. But no more school boy stuff. A cameo as Harry’s dad? That would be perfect!”

[Author Bio: Spencer Blohm is a freelance entertainment and pop culture blogger for GetDirectTV. In his free time he attempts to train his pet owl to carry messages, and then return home. This venture is not going as well as expected.]