CityLife

Daniel Radcliffe and the strangeness of being world famous

LAST HURRAH: Daniel as Harry

AN earnest young actor bursts into the room, grabs my hand in a shake and says: "Hi, I'm Daniel." But he doesn't need to make an introduction.

Daniel Radcliffe has one of the most recognised faces in the world thanks to a certain boy wizard named Harry Potter.

In fact, after seven years playing JK Rowling's creation there can't be many places where the 19-year-old isn't known. "If I find that place, I may move there!" he jokes.

Dressed simply in a red shirt and jeans, hel's clutching a can of Diet Coke and scanning the hotel suite with curiosity.

Either the caffeine's taking effect, or he's just naturally full of beans, because once he starts talking about something, the words just flow in an (unstoppable) torrent of excitement.

He's just finished filming the latest instalment of Harry Potter and, despite his bouncy demeanour, insists he's exhausted.

"If I wasn't here, I'd be in bed probably now. I know it's coming up to two o'clock in the afternoon, but that wouldn't matter to me!

Energy

"I've never felt this tired before. Normally I have a lot of energy. I still do have a lot of energy, as you can probably tell, but for some reason, just before the end of a film, your body starts to let itself wind down.

"Diet Coke is a big help, although I did hear something rather disturbing about it recently," he adds, heading off on a tangent.

"No, it was about full fat Coke - apparently highway patrolmen in certain states of America carry two litre bottles of Coke around with them to wash blood off the roads... but hell, it tastes good, so never mind!"

It's this clear thirst for and love of knowledge that makes it so hard to distinguish Daniel, in the flesh, from his on-screen alter ego.

He admits that curiosity is a quality he's picked up from the wizard student.

"What's great about Harry is he doesn't take no for an answer, he doesn't accept what people are saying, he always questions things and tries to go beyond what people are telling him and in the end that is both the downfall and the salvation of his character," he says.

Curiosity

"I think curiosity is a lovely quality to have and just a lust for knowledge's sake. Also, what I think all kids have learnt from him is just the value of friendship and how important friends can be to life."

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film in the highly successful franchise, once again pits Harry and his faithful sidekicks Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) against dark forces.

With the evil Voldemort on the rise, the students at Hogwarts have to be ever more vigilant about who is among them.

Returning teacher Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) provides Harry with valuable knowledge about his former pupil Tom Riddle, a boy who would grow up to become a threat to the wizarding world.

There's also romance in the air, as Ron gets a new girlfriend, making Hermione jealous, and Harry kisses Ron's sister Ginny (Bonnie Wright) for the first time.

"It was weird, because I've known Bonnie since she was nine. I was 11 when she was nine, I hasten to add. It was weird, because when Katie Leung was brought in to play Cho (Harry's first love), we all knew she was going to be the love interest, but with Bonnie as Ginny, she was just brought in to play Ron's little sister, so it was kind of odd kissing her."

Nervous

That said, Daniel claims he wasn't nervous about the scene. Partly because he had just been performing in a West End and Broadway production of radical Seventies play Equus, which involved getting his clothes off every night.

"I'd been naked on stage by that point, so there's not much else to worry you," he jokes. "But I later found out that Bonnie was nervous, so I could have been a little bit more sensitive about the whole thing."

He's tight-lipped about his current off-screen romance, with Equus co-star Laura O'Toole, but seconds later is happily chatting away about his celebrity crush on Sophie Dahl.

"She was at the fifth film premiere and kissed me on the cheek. I turned round to her and said, 'Thank you, because you've given me closure on my adolescent years'.

Congratulating

"I also got a note from her congratulating me on how I'd presented an award at the Baftas and I think we know that means she wants to marry me!"

What would Jamie Cullum say? "He'd accept it, he'd have to live with that!"

For all the fame and money - he reportedly signed a contract worth more than £25m for the final Harry Potter films - Daniel's a normal, if fairly intellectual, teenager. During breaks from filming, he and Rupert play table tennis, or watch daytime TV and old war movies. He writes poetry in his spare time and stays in touch via letters.

"It's a very, very old-fashioned thing to do, but I love it, because I know it's a very special thing when someone gets a letter."

He actually thinks his fame is "hilarious", explaining: "I find it bizarre, because I meet people who I admire and respect and who I'm a fan of. I'm really nervous about meeting them, and then I think, `God, this is how people feel when they meet me', and that's a peculiar feeling."

As the latest film opens on Wednesday, he'd better get used to it all over again.