Daniel Radcliffe knows that he's going to be Harry Potter for the rest of his life. That came along with the job, and he's remarkably cool with it. But that doesn't mean we should always expect him to behave like a cute, wand-waving wizard in training.
In fact, Radcliffe has gone out of his way to shed the cloak and glasses both physically and metaphorically, choosing scandalous roles and partaking in decidedly muggle-esque behavior. Actually occurring right in the middle of his Harry Potter run, Daniel Radcliffe joined the cast of the West End's revival of Equus , a play about a young man who has a fixation, shall we say, with horses.
And by fixation we mean sexual attraction that leads to gruesome violence. Did we mention the role calls for full-frontal nudity? Because at years-old, the star of the most successful children's book film adaptation in the world used his down time to get naked in front of a nightly audience of theatergoers.
There are ways an actor can distance himself from being typecast as a children's entertainer and then there's what Daniel did. Maybe it's a British thing and they're more cool with it.
But can you imagine how Americans would have reacted if Doogie Howser had gone this route? Since Daniel Radcliffe had already shattered his kid-friendly career track with his horse-friendly performance in Equus , taking on the role of counterculture beat poet Allen Ginsberg didn't seem all that risque. Initial speculation about Radcliffe's Ginsberg portrayal centered on the widely known First Amendment controversy surrounding his poem, Howl , but the movie instead focused on Ginsberg's youthful relationships with his fellow beat generation artists.
