Daniel Radcliffe, Dark Prince

Radcliffe told me that he’d like to use the combination of respect he gained from Equus and his worldwide reputation from the Harry Potter films to do a new play perhaps after the last Harry Potter film wraps. “Because you are sort of writing it basically as you go along—at least that is what I’m told.” He’s also the utter professional. When I pressed him back then as to why Kenneth Branagh, who had originally been slated to direct the revival of Equus, dropped out of the production he carefully deflected the question. “The honest answer is that I just don’t know. He had directed me in the workshop. Richard wasn’t playing Dysart then either. It was Adrian Lester, the young black actor, which would have been really interesting as well. It’s that old euphemism—artistic differences—but I’m not sure what that actually meant in this case. I don’t think Kenneth ever even saw the production and I would have loved him too,” he said rather sadly. “But I am hopeful that I will work with him again.”

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The equation should be turned around for Radcliffe is a much bigger celebrity than Branagh is, so much so that even at such a young age he has a rather jaundiced take on what celebrity means in this celebrity-saturated world in which we all now live. “Take the London mayoral elections last year. The reason that Boris Johnson got in was that he hosted a few times, Have I Got News for You, which is an English satirical show. It was a vote for celebrity, nothing else. Now he may do brilliantly—and I hope he does for London—but it was a rather hollow victory. And yet I was the only person my age I knew who voted in that election. Not one of my friends had even registered.”

“Were you even alive when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister?” I asked him.

It was the one question that had seemed to stump him the whole afternoon. “Hmm ... maybe toward the end of her .... well, reign I almost said. I was born in 1989.”

“That’s scary.”

“Even I am having those moments now when I meet other young actors. I was just talking with Dakota Fanning and she said she was born in 1994 or something ridiculous and you think, No you weren’t. It’s not possible. No one was born after 1990.”

“Look, Dan, I don’t want to start hearing you say you’re old. It doesn’t fit with your whole Harry Potter image. Be careful.”

“It’s a funny thing. But I do. I’ve always felt old. As an only child, I’ve always been around older people—either my parents or friends of my parents. And then as an actor I was suddenly mostly working with older people. I have always felt like an old man—at least mentally.”

How about physically? I had asked him back on that winter day while we were warming ourselves with tea at the Algonquin if he was in love. “Aahh … not really at the moment ... “ he had answered back then. “I find I’m still at the age where love happens a lot. I can walk into a room and I can fall in love twice.”