Here’s to a very happy birthday to Daniel Radcliffe! The British actor known around the world as The Boy Who Lived in the Harry Potter franchise turns 30 years old today. And doesn’t that make you feel ancient?
But it’s true, the math checks out. Radcliffe was 11 when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in 2001, exactly the same age as the character in the story. In fact, as further proof that he was born for the part, his birthday – July 23rd – is just a week before Harry’s, which author J.K. Rowling has specified in the books as being July 31st.
Radcliffe continued to star as the Chosen One for seven more movies until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 brought the series of adaptations to a close in 2011. Since finishing the saga, he’s become known for picking a range of roles that are as far from Harry Potter as you can get. His weirdest part has to be in 2016’s Swiss Army Man, in which a man develops a friendship with a corpse on a desert island, and Radcliffe plays the corpse.
His upcoming projects include Playmobil: The Movie, in which the star voices the James Bond-like Rex Dasher, comedy-action movie Guns Akimbo and political thriller Escape from Pretoria. Some Marvel fans even want to see him replace Hugh Jackman as the next Wolverine, something that Radcliffe has also responded to.
That probably won’t ever happen, but the actor’s clearly enjoying himself playing such different parts. But would he ever return to the character that made his name? Well, Radcliffe believes that it’s inevitable that Warner Bros. will reboot the saga at some point, but he says he’d understandably have to “think about” playing Harry again, perhaps in a Cursed Child film.
In the meantime, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter continues to be expanded in Fantastic Beasts 3, due out in 2021.
