Our countdown to "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" continues. Today, it's our exclusive interview with the star of the magical franchise, Daniel Radcliffe, who is not quite ready to leave the halls of Hogwarts but does admit he is starting to look toward life beyond its familiar corridors.  

 

Most movie sets are flimsy facades — the walls usually move when you lean against them — but not the airplane factory in Watford, England, that a decade ago was transformed into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and built to last. The floors and walls are real stone, and no one knows their cracks and echoes better than Daniel Radcliffe.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. “I still get turned around in here,” Radcliffe said as he wandered through an especially dim corridor. “I couldn’t tell you the name of this set, but I know my way to all the sets. Well, pretty much.”

Radcliffe was wearing a black suit with a shirt and tie the color of a dark red wine, his costume for a holiday party scene in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” He seems smaller in person than on the screen; he’s a compact 5-foot-5 but it’s the sinewy physique of a horse jockey thanks to years of training as an action hero. In person, he has a quick smile and the same chipper enthusiasm as his world-famous character, but the actor also possesses a sly wit and calculating eye that quickly sets him apart from the puppyish boy wizard he plays.

Radcliffe, who turns 20 this month, has been wearing the Hogwarts robes since summer 2000, when “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling signed off on his casting. It’s difficult to understate the impact on his life in England where the mania for the books and films is even more intense than it is stateside.
In the subsequent years, Radcliffe has been called the world’s richest working teen (he made $25 million just last year, according to Forbes, and also inked a $43 million deal for two more “Potter” films) and at age 16 he became the youngest non-royal to have an individual portrait put on display at Britain’s 153-year-old National Portrait Gallery.

“I started this when I was about 10 or 11; it’s quite mad if you think about it,” Radcliffe said with a serene expression that suggested he is accustomed to the bedlam. That eighth and last “Potter” film is scheduled to be released in 2011 and will close out one of the most massive undertakings in mainstream film history.

No one would begrudge Radcliffe for taking a long break afterward, but no one who knows him actually expects that to happen. The actor performed to strong reviews in London and New York in Peter Shaffer’s play “Equus,” and the harrowing spiritual and sexual themes (along with the nude scenes for the star) were an emphatic declaration that Radcliffe wants to be more than Rowling’s magical orphan.

“He’s an extremely focused young man and keen to learn as much as he can at all times,” “Half-Blood” director David Yates said. “He’s pursuing a career that will carry him far beyond this role and these films. I have seen very few people his age with such purpose in them.”

Of the sets in Watford, the Great Hall and Dumbledore’s office are the most impressive to visit. “I pity the poor blokes who have to take it all down,” Radcliffe said. “It will take them years.”

Radcliffe said the “Potter” soundstage has been a second home  and a one-of-a-kind acting academy. Several generations of the best from British and Irish stage and cinema have passed through the franchise, such as Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson and the late Richard Harris, and Radcliffe tried to learn something from each of them.

Asked for an example, he points out that Richard Griffiths, who plays Harry’s sour uncle, was raised by deaf parents and, attuned to nonverbal expression, approaches his work with a more internal strategy than most actors. He first learns what his character is thinking in each scene as opposed to what he is saying.

Griffiths also once advised Radcliffe to never let the camera catch him when he wasn’t thinking because the void would be read in his eyes; the veteran prefaced that counsel by saying it was told to him by Lee Marvin, who heard it from Spencer Tracy.

“Just think,” Radcliffe said, “how many young people get access to that sort of advice and that sort of history?”

But it’s Gary Oldman and Imelda Staunton who have left the biggest impression on Radcliffe. “To me those are the two that are just in the firmament,” Radcliffe said as he relaxed between takes. “All of them, everyone, has been brilliant, but those are the two that mean something special to me.”

In “Half-Blood Prince,” Potter comes to grips with being “the chosen one” and he has some fun with it, especially when his closest friends take him to task for taking himself too seriously. The same seems to apply to the actor waving the wand.

Radcliffe loves going to movies and the theater but he does so with pals and only on nights when there’s no red carpet. “He won’t do premieres,” a longtime member of the “Potter” production team said. “He doesn’t court publicity. He puts on a baseball cap and goes to movies in London on a Friday night with friends.”

Radcliffe is an intense music fan and jumped at the chance to discuss some of his favorite bands, which on the day of the interview included the Arctic Monkeys and the Libertines. He even plays; Oldman (who once recorded a duet with David Bowie and famously portrayed Sid Vicious on screen) tutored his young friend on bass guitar.  He clearly enjoys the music’s reckless energy and, perhaps, the idea of separating himself further from Harry Potter; he also likes using a bit of raw language and, with a wink, talking about the number of beautiful women in London.

Radcliffe’s parents were with him when fate picked him for the role of Harry. The family was attending a play, “Stones in His Pockets,” when they bumped into David Heyman, the “Potter” producer who urged the youngster, who had by then already starred in the BBC film “David Copperfield,” to audition.

Fame has not pulled Radcliffe, an only child, away from his family. His father, Alan Radcliffe, stood not 20 yards away from Radcliffe during the filming of the holiday party scene and afterward they took a short stroll; viewed from a distance, the pair have the same gait and profile. Radcliffe chuckled when asked about it. “It’s true, isn’t it? People say I look like my father; I don’t. I just have all the same mannerisms. If we walk down the road for 30 seconds, we will fall into step with each other.”

His mother, Marcia Jeannine Gresham, told her son that as the “Potter” novels went along, she saw more of her son in the character and vice versa.

“She read ‘Half-Blood Prince’ and she did say, ‘Harry has started to argue like you argue,'” Radcliffe said with a roll of his eyes. “He is very good in analogies, and I also use a lot of semantics, and it does really irritate people into submission really. Obviously, J.K. Rowling actually had cameras in my house and knows that is how I argue...”

Radcliffe laughed but then grew a bit serious.

“I would like to think I haven’t been influenced by him too much just by playing him for so long,” Radcliffe said. “I am thrilled to have this in my life, but it is separate from my life, you know? It’s nice to be called Dan. And actually I started correcting people now. You do feel like a bit of an idiot doing that, but at the same time, in the long run it is better for us. I know it’s better for me.”

-- Geoff Boucher

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At top, Daniel Radcliffe in 2008 photographed by Junko KimuraI/Getty Images. All "Harry Potter" images courtesy of Warner Bros.

 

It was about 3:20 a.m. yesterday when my phone rang: It was David Yates, the soft-spoken British director whose second "Harry Potter" film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," arrives in theaters across America on July 15. He sounded apologetic: "It's quite early there isn't it? Thanks for doing this, mate."

Despite the hour, it was my pleasure to take the call -- Yates is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet and, after visiting him outside London last year on the set of "Half-Blood Prince," it was a treat to catch up, even if his schedule required the pre-dawn appointment. Right now, Yates is in the midst of filming the final boy-wizard adventure, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which will be split into two films.

"We're here in the forest, we've just finished the scene where Harry, Hermione and Ron are captured by the Snatchers after being chased through the woods. The Snatchers are brutal and scary but they aren't the most intelligent of creatures.They're trying to figure out exactly who it is they've caught."

I told Yates about my new theory: That the single best decision made in show business over the last decade was the casting of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint in the lead roles of Harry, Hermione and Ron. I could almost hear him smile on the other side of the Atlantic.

"Absolutely, I think you're correct. It was an extraordinary bit of judgment, bringing those three in. They have been so stable and level-headed and in working with them I continue to be impressed by how keen they are to challenge themselves and to try new things to bring out the characters that they portray. They have become these engaging ambassadors for the films and the story. They have been endlessly enthusiastic. They want to see how good they can be in these roles. They haven't had their heads turned, either, by the fame and attention or any of it, which is wonderful for everyone to see."

There's never been a film franchise that has delivered this many movies on this scale and in this sort of time. The Hollywood history books will look back on this as the Hogwarts Decade. The first "Potter" film was released in November 2001, and the eighth will close out the saga in summer of 2011. Yates says there is a sense on the set that something very special is unfolding.

"I think with each film the audience is surprised by how much [the lead actors] have grown up," he said. "I think it's unique in the history of film, really, given the popularity of the series and the way these young actors have grown up in front of us. It will be interesting in the years to come to see how they themselves look back on this experience."

"Half-Blood Prince" was supposed to be in theaters last November, but that plan changed when Warner Bros. abruptly pushed the film back. The reason? Money. The studio execs reasoned that young fans would be more likely to see the film multiple times if it was released outside the school year. And because Warner Bros. was fresh from last summer's massive success with "The Dark Knight," putting some space between the two blockbusters made good business sense. Many "Potter" fans, of course, were terribly distressed by the postponement and, it turns out, so was Yates.

"It was not something I warmed to initially. At the time, I was so adrenalized, I was so caught up in the process of getting the film in on deadline and making the movie on a certain schedule, and then the decision to delay was a huge anticlimax. There was a huge sense of disappointment, I must say. We finished the film a year ago, so it's very strange to go all this time without seeing it with an audience, which is what you make it for. But the studio made their case for the move and I came to understand and appreciate their reasons and they are very good at delivering these movies and understanding the process of making a film successful and I think it wise to defer to their judgment."

I asked Yates about the downsides of the delay for him as a filmmaker and he chuckled. "You find yourself fiddling with it much more in post-production, naturally. There's a good and bad to that. You could keep adjusting things for the rest of your life if you allowed yourself to do that. That can be unhealthy and at some point you have to say, 'Here is the cut-off date.' I know fans are eager to see it and it's been interesting for us to come back to it now, even as we are busy filming the next installments."

There are only seven "Potter" books on the J.K. Rowling shelf, of course, but the producers and Yates are breaking the final novel into a two-part film. They cite the jam-packed tale of the final book and the difficulty of whittling it down to a single film. Plenty of skeptics, of course, are saying money is the true reason for the tacked-on Warner Bros. release, but Yates was more interested in a different fiscal consideration. "I will get the benefit of two budgets, the running time of two films and all the resources that brings with it to tell this huge adventure; more time, more money, more special effects. There are always things that are lost when you adapt a book to a film. With two films, much less will be lost."

I asked Yates if he had decided on the splitting point -- the juncture at which the seventh film will stop.

 "Yes, I think we have," he said. "Things can change when you edit, of course, but the idea now is that it will be not long after the sequence that we are filming here today. That's what we're experimenting with. We've had three or four different ideas about where to cut off the seventh film. Traditionally, the movies have ended with a death or a bereavement, some sort of passage or arrival. This time we think we will end with more a cliffhanger. Again, though, that's the thought as of this moment."

In the background, I could hear a voice calling Yates back to the set. The gentlemanly filmmaker apologized again. "I'm sorry I wish I could talk longer. It will be lovely to catch up when you're back here next time. We're very excited for everyone to see 'Half-Blood Prince' and talking about it only makes me more excited. Okay, get get some sleep, mate. Cheers."

-- Geoff Boucher

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Photos: David Yates on the set, at top, with Daniel Radcliffe and Bonnie Wright and, at bottom, Imelda Staunton. Both courtesy of Warner Bros.

UPDATED: There was incorrect caption information on the photograph. Doby sorry.