Daniel Radcliffe says people are shocked to find out he’s not ‘more messed up’ when they meet him

Daniel Radcliffe has revealed that people are surprised he turned out so well, despite being a child actor. 

The Harry Potter star, who has recently turned 32, shot to worldwide fame in acclaimed film franchise at the tender age of 11 – and played the titular character for ten years as part of the global phenomenon.

He told The Mirror: ‘I was very aware early on people have very low expectations of what I’ll be like, which is great because hopefully you always exceed them.

‘Once I was having dinner with the Director of Photography on a film and I told some weird story about a thing that happened to me in a kind of light, amused way.

‘When I got to the end, the DP looked at me and went, ‘How are you not more messed up?’ It’s a reaction that does happen and I don’t really have a satisfying answer for people.’   

Daniel thanks his parents for how he turned out. His father Alan Radcliffe is a literary agent and his mother Marcia Gresham is a casting director, and kept him  grounded throughout the filming of Harry Potter by making sure he was still having fun and reassuring him he didn’t have to do the films. 

To which Daniel always replied: ‘I want to do this, I really don’t like school.’ 

Fellow child stars such as Lindsay Lohan, Justin Bieber and Macauley Culkin have battled with their addiction issues and arrests, but the actor has somehow managed to avoid big scandal.

Daniel has spoken openly about his battles with alcohol in the past, he became teetotal in 2010 and has since been on track. 

 In 2019, Daniel admitted he turned to alcohol as a way to deal with his global fame following the success of the Harry Potter franchise.

Making an appearance on Off Camera With Sam Jones on Wednesday, the actor revealed that he would drink as a ‘way of forgetting’ that he was being watched.

He explained: ‘I really struggled with particularly in my late teens when I was going out to places for the first time where you would feel…again it could have largely been in my head but…you would feel watched when you went into a bar, when you went into a pub. 

 ‘Then, in my case, the quickest way of forgetting about the fact that you were being watched was to get very drunk 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.’