Dan Radcliffe Talks Filming the Events on the Tower and More (Updated with Scans)

Jul 04, 2009
HBP Film
The Guardian has a new profile on actor Dan Racliffe now online (UPDATE: Scans courtesy of Ivana can be found via this link). In this lengthy new article, there is some conversation about his personal life and things he enjoys (“I’d love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two
passions. There is an art to a short story. I love Raymond Carver, and
Chekhov – without making myself sound more highbrow than I am!” he
blusters, a reminder of the public schoolboy he was, on and off, until
the age of 17. “I watch Britain’s Got Talent like the rest of us”) but there are some new comments regarding the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as well as news of some acting advice hes gotten from co-star Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) when he was preparing to do Equus on Broadway.
Regarding Mr. Rickman, the piece states: “Alan Rickman, Severus Snape in the Potter films, was a big help on
Broadway. He cut short a holiday in Connecticut to visit Radcliffe and
give him some pointers on stage presentation “that absolutely saw me
through the last six weeks of the run” – how to be still, exploiting
his “quite short and compact frame”. Radcliffe says he used to
“struggle” with Rickman: “I never used to know when he was joking or
not. I think I took a lot of his sarcasm seriously. But recently I’ve
woken up to it and he’s actually a great guy.”
In terms of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dan Radcliffe describes filming the dramatic events on the tower which take place at end of the film, saying how emotional and hard it was to film, and he gives a reaction to a scene for Deathly Hallows as well. Quotage:
“The whole film was quite difficult, but particularly that scene.
I’d never been bereaved until the end of last year, when I lost my
grandmother – before that, I’d never experienced any kind of sadness.
So it was very tricky. It’s also a tremendous pressure, because you
know that a lot of people watching the film will have felt that. I
tried to play it quite quiet, because that’s just how Harry is.”
The
film also marks Harry’s second kiss, with Ginny Weasley, sister of best
friend Ron. Was that enjoyable? “It was quite weird for me because I’ve
known Bonnie [Wright, who plays Ginny] since she was nine and I was 11.
Very strange. But we got through it. It was good. And it’ll get a bit
of a cheer from the Potter fans. But I have to say, today I saw
playback of Ron and Hermione’s kiss [from the final book], and it is
easily, from what we’ve filmed so far, the biggest moment in all the
films. It is,” he says approvingly, “a great kiss.”