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When the world was introduced to Daniel Radcliffe in 2000, he was just 11 years old. Now, the actor has been on Broadway and is currently starring in a show called Miracle Workers. The handsome hunk sure has changed throughout the years! Scroll through the gallery below to see the amazing transformation.
“They called us, and I was in the bath at the time, and my dad picked up the phone,” the 30-year-old told Entertainment Tonight about getting the lead role in Harry Potter in 2000. “My dad came upstairs, and I thought it was going to be a letdown call to say I didn’t get the part. My dad — he came upstairs — and I just sat like this [blank stare] for a while and just let it sink in. It still hasn’t sunk in. I was crying I was so happy, and I woke up at 2 a.m., and I thought it was a dream.”
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Peter Mountain/WireImage
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
“The best thing I can do is enjoy it because there are so many worse things happening the world, so it’s just stupid and quite selfish to be worrying about being recognized,” he said at the time about the successful movies. The U.K. native admitted he signed over “a thousand” autographs at the time.
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So Relatable
Daniel attended the premiere for the third Harry Potter movie called Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in New York City in 2004. “It’s a lot easier because you’re the same age as the character, pretty much. I am a bit older than Harry by a couple of months, really,” he said about his relating to his character on The Early Show.
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Rock Out
“I listen to a lot of music, see friends, read,” Daniel said about his downtime on set. His costar Emma Watson also revealed they played table tennis on set, too.
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Memorable Times
At the Hand, Foot and Wand ceremony outside the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Daniel couldn’t believe the honor he received. “Thank you all very, very much for coming,” he said. “This is truly amazing to join people like John Wayne and just looking around at some of the other names here is remarkable. Thank you for letting us do this, everybody.”
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Jon Furniss/WireImage
Big Critic
Of all the eight Harry Potter movies Daniel made, there’s one that he doesn’t ever need to watch again — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. “I’m just not very good in it,” he told the Daily Mail in 2014. “I hate it. My acting is very one-note, and I can see I got complacent and what I was trying to do just didn’t come across. My best film is the fifth one — Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — because I can see a progression.”
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Mike Marsland/WireImage
The End
The last film! The Hollywood A-lister made his final red carpet appearance for the Harry Potter films in 2011. “Doing Harry Potter was an incredible blessing because it gave me this opportunity to start a fantastic career,” he told the British outlet at the time.
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Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Full Frontal
In 2008, Daniel had a full-front nude scene in the Broadway play Equus. It was his first post-Harry Potter role after he made five of the eight movies. “When you take your clothes off — whoever you are — there is very little acting going on,” he said. “You are standing on a stage thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m naked. They are all looking at my bits.’ They are in the audience thinking: ‘Oh my God, he’s naked. Look at his bits.’ It’s the weirdest thing because you are absolutely dreading it, yet you are doing it voluntarily, and then you have to do it again and again and again.”
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Dave M. Benett/WireImage
Many Mentors
Afterward, Daniel went onto star in various types of films including one called Kill Your Darlings in 2013. “I learned from my parents a huge amount, and I learned a lot from the crew and the cast on Harry Potter,” he admitted in an interview with Slant magazine at the time. “I definitely think I have taken their good advice at heart and have tried to do the right things. I just hope to continue acting for as long as I can. And then, ultimately one day I would like to direct, but I think that’s a long way off.”
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Anthony Devlin/PA Images via Getty Images
An Honor
In 2014, Daniel won the WhatsonStage Award in London for his work as best actor in the play called The Cripple of Inishmaan. “I would just like to say a huge thank you to Michael Grandage for letting be a part of what was an amazing season and for creating a really fantastic company of actors. They are really an amazing group of people. This play was a special time for all of us,” he said. “The crew of the theater, the front of house, our amazing stage manager crew was a part of making it special and making it a great place to work every night.”
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Walter McBride/WireImage
Friends Forever
“It’s amazingly gratifying,” he said about winning the prestigious award. “It’s wonderful because it means the people who came to see the show are voting. We were blessed with amazing audiences all the way through. Not only have I received this, but I have seen Rupert [Grint] get newcomer as well. It’s a very cool thing — what are we now? Three years on from Potter, we are all making our way and doing a variety of work.”
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Ben Gabbe/FilmMagic
New Part
Daniel went on to star in a movie called Horns in 2013. “It’s a challenging part, and there’s a lot to mine, in terms of what he has gone through, prior to beginning of the film and as he’s going through it,” he told Collider at the time. “I broke down the script, the way that I would approach anything. And then, you have the more superficial but fun challenges of the prosthetics, which is mainly a challenge of staying still, for me.”
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John Shearer/Getty Images for Entertainment Weekly
Confessions
Since Daniel became a star at such a young age, he admitted he had a lot of sex and was heavily drinking to cope with fame. “In my case, the quickest way to forget about the fact that you’re being watched is to get very drunk,” he explained to Off Camera in February. “And then as you get very drunk, you become aware that ‘Oh, people are watching more now because now I’m getting very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more.’”
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Getting Better
The producer has been sober since 2010. “Ultimately, it was my own decision,” he revealed. “Like, I woke up one morning after a night going, like, ‘This is probably not good.’ Even at the lowest point, I still loved my job so much. I loved going to set, and there was never a day where my own [feelings] would affect how I was on set, there was never a point where I was like, ‘Oh, I wish this hadn’t happened to me, I wish I wasn’t Harry Potter.’”
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Expanding His Horizons
In 2016, Daniel starred in Swiss Army Man. “I play a dead guy that sort of comes back to life, and there are no rules for how you would react to anything because he doesn’t know anything about the world,” he told the BBC at the time. “It’s a very smart film, it’s a wonderfully silly film. It’s a very, very fun movie and playing dead was great.”
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A Nice Guy
Since Daniel has been in the limelight for a long time, people are kind of surprised when they meet him and learn he is actually really kind. “People say to me, ‘I was so expecting you to be a d–k.’ It’s incredible when the expectations are so low,” he told GQ in 2016. “In a way it’s great because pretty much everyone I’ve met in the last 10 years has expected me to be a complete twat. So, it’s easy to exceed that.”
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Super Famous
Daniel also explained that his fame settled down after Harry Potter wrapped. “It took me a few years to work out my priorities,” he said. “Now, I pick things that I think will make me the most happy, and not try to think, ‘What’s gonna be the most successful thing I can do?’ You can be despondent about the fact that you’re never gonna be in something that big again, but that’s f—king idiotic. I’ve been in the most successful thing I ever will be in and to me it’s a huge relief. Because you just go, ‘OK, that’s literally never gonna happen again.’”
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Andrew Lipovsky/NBC
Remembering the Good Times
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2018, the Now You See Me 2 alum commented on his time playing the famous wizard. “What’s cool about that stuff is that I never — as a kid, and you’re just insecure at that age — I never felt cool at any point playing that character,” he told the host.
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Bruce Glikas/Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic
On Stage
Daniel went on to appear in another Broadway show called The Lifespan of a Fact. “We sort of get to have our cake and eat it by being like we’re not an overly political play. It’s about a fact-checker, but you can’t do a play without fact and the nature of truth without it seeming political. This is a play that will get people talking about it. It’s really funny, it’s short, you’ll love it,” he said on The View in October 2018.
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Big Dreams
Currently, Daniel is starring in a comedy series called Miracle Workers, but he still has one dream in mind — directing. “I think my goal was to have directed something by the time I was 30, so I might recalibrate that and make it by the time I’m 40,” he told The Daily Beast in February. “I just want to be an actor who just pops up in stuff and who people know from Harry Potter, maybe. If I could make it so that it doesn’t feel like an event every time I appear in something that’s not Harry Potter, then that’s the goal.”
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