Moving away from Harry Potter (From The Argus)

Moving away from Harry Potter

10:12am Monday 13th February 2012 in Interview By Duncan Hall

When Daniel Radcliffe bounds into the Soho Hotel room, the diminutive 22-year-old doesn’t act like one of the last decade’s most successful movie stars.

There is something natural and honest about him – without any Hollywood-style artifice or ego – as he eagerly sips his coffee and talks about his first movie since the Harry Potter franchise ended last year.

The Woman In Black is a very different beast from Potter, with Radcliffe playing a young lawyer, Arthur Kipps, who has been scarred by the tragic loss of his wife in childbirth.

The unfortunate Kipps uncovers a whole new world of horror when he is sent to a cursed village to organise the effects of a dead spinster in her empty and echoing marshland home.

When he begins to see a veiled woman in black around the house and grounds, he discovers the village’s horrible secret.

Loosely based on Susan Hill’s homage to the Victorian horror story, the new film has been scripted by Stardust writer Jane Goldman and directed by relative newcomer James Watkins, under the auspices of the newly revived Hammer Horror studio.

“I read the script on the last day of filming Harry Potter and was blown away,”

says Radcliffe. “It was brilliantly written. I had never leaned towards horror in my own life, but this is not just a horror movie – it’s a film with real heart.”

With a remake of The Wizard Of Oz featuring his Harry Potter castmates among the job offers he has rejected since finishing JK Rowling’s epic, it was the character of Kipps that attracted him.

“Arthur has been sapped of his own vitality by the tragic circumstances of his wife’s death,” he says. “I liked the idea of playing somebody completely detached from life and interaction with other people.

“I was looking forward to playing a father too. People are so used to seeing me in a schoolboy outfit.”

The Bluebell Railway’s Sheffield Park Station provided the location for a key climactic scene, with filming taking place in November 2010.

“The Bluebell Railway is a unique place,” says Radcliffe.

“It could only exist in the UK, carefully nurtured and preserved brilliantly.”

It provides the backdrop for Kipps being reunited with his son, played by Radcliffe’s godson Misha Handley.

“I asked my godson as I thought it would be useful for me to have that chemistry rather than to have to form a relationship with a child,”

he says.

“He understood it was make-believe. I told him I was playing a part I hadn’t played before and wanted him to help me. It was like playing a game – but with a lot of people in the game!

“His first day of shooting was a night shoot [at the railway]. It was cold and horrible on the tracks, and he was a little five-year-old boy, for whom 9.30pm was the latest he had ever been up.”

It meant the cast and crew had to rely on sweets and iPad apps to keep the youngster interested. The pressure was also on, as actors under five are only allowed to do night shoots for four hours and have to take the next day off.

“He was a trooper,” smiles Radcliffe, who had to face much worse than a late night during the shoot.

One major scene in the movie sees Kipps plunge into the marshes surrounding the haunted house – an experience which Radcliffe said brought his “short man syndrome” to the fore.

“I was in this 10ft long, 5ft deep and wide pit of mud,”

he remembers. “I thought, I’m in here for two days and I’m going to prove how tough I am. I’m not going to complain once.

“I was going to do this underwater thing and break the surface like in Apocalypse Now, but when I came up I was informed I looked more like Al Jolson...”

Ironically, the scene touched on some of his own childhood fears.

“I was scared of the dark – and the spiders in Jumanji scared me for a week,”

he admits.

“They are quite rational fears but I was also terrified of being buried alive as a kid.

It could happen any day...”

The Woman In Black forms the first part of his post-Potter cinematic career and he admits, although he worked with much of the same crew as on the Harry Potter movies, he was quite pleased to see a different character name on the call sheet every morning.

Since filming The Woman In Black he has enjoyed a successful run on Broadway with the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, undergoing a gruelling daily training regime to turn him into a song and dance man.

And he is set to play beat poet Allen Ginsberg in the forthcoming film Kill Your Darlings.

He hopes to emulate his hero, former Sherlock Holmes actor Jeremy Brett, in his choice of screen roles.

“Jeremy Brett said he didn’t want to be cast in something where he didn’t wear a three-piece suit,” he says.

“Ginsberg is the most contemporary character I’ve ever played outside Potter.”

Between jobs he has to deal with the problem of being one of cinema’s most recognisible faces.

“I’m like Jason Bourne, I can tell you in a restaurant which table has recognised me,” he laughs.

“The only time it p***** me off is when people take pictures without asking.

“When I’m walking down a crowded street, my girlfriend tends to look like my carer – I keep my head to the ground and follow her feet.

“Halloween is my favourite day of the year; it’s a most surreal feeling to be able to walk around with your head up.”

Despite this, he is keen to keep up his movie profile and is enjoying the experience of working with new directors, such as Watkins, on his second feature, and Kill Your Darlings’s John Krokidas, on his first fulllength film.

“Everyone wants to work with Scorcese and Spielberg,”

he says. “I want to work with the next one.

“I understand there’s a lot of interest in what I do next, but I have to do what I’m interested in and what I’m passionate about.

“If a Brad Pitt film comes out, people will see it because they trust him, they know there will be something interesting in it, otherwise he wouldn’t do the film.

“I want to be one of those sort of actors.”

* The Woman In Black is in Sussex cinemas now