Biography for Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter)

Date of Birth

23 July 1989, Fulham, London, England, UK

Birth Name

Daniel Jacob Radcliffe

Nickname

Dan

Height

5' 6" (1.68 m)

Mini Biography

Daniel Jacob Radcliffe was born on July 23rd, 1989 to Alan Radcliffe and Marcia Gresham. He began performing in small school productions as a young boy. Soon enough, he landed a role in David Copperfield (1999) (TV), as the young David Copperfield. A couple of years later, he landed a role as Mark Pendel in The Tailor of Panama (2001), the son of Harry and Louisa Pendel (Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis). Lee Curtis had indeed pointed out to Daniel's mother that he could be Harry Potter himself. Soon afterwards, Daniel was cast as Harry Potter by director, Chris Columbus in the film that hit theatres in November 16, 2001, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001). He was recognized worldwide after this film was released. Pleasing audiences and critics everywhere, filming on its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), commenced shortly afterwards. He appeared again as Harry in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and then appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) directed by Mike Newell. Shortly afterwards, he finished filming _December Boys (2006)_ in Adelaide, Australia, Kangaroo Island, and Geelong, Australia which began on the 14th of November, 2005 and ended sometime in December. On January 27th, 2006, he attended the South Bank Awards Show to present the award for "Breakthrough Artist of the Year" to Billie Piper. Dan's set to reprise his famous character once again for the next installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), which filming begins sometime early in February 2006.

Now being one of the world's most recognizable people, Daniel leads a somewhat normal life. He has made friends working on the Harry Potter films, which include his co-stars Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. Hopefully, he will continue his blossoming acting career and be truly brilliant.

Harry James Potter is a fictional character and the main protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series of books. He is the eponymous viewpoint character of these seven books. According to author Rowling, she thought up the character of Harry Potter while waiting for a delayed train in 1990, and made him an anguished orphan after Rowling experienced the death of her own mother.

In the world of the Harry Potter books, Harry Potter is best friends with Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and later romances Ron's younger sister Ginny Weasley. In the Harry Potter film adaptations, Harry is portrayed by British actor Daniel Radcliffe.

According to author J. K. Rowling, the idea for both the Harry Potter books and its eponymous protagonist came while waiting for a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990. Rowling stated that in these hours, her idea for "this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn't know he was a wizard became more and more real to me." While she fleshed out the ideas for her book, Rowling also decided to make Harry an orphan and to make him visit a boarding school which she called Hogwarts. She explained in a 1999 interview with The Guardian: "Harry HAD to be an orphan - so that he's a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them […] Hogwarts HAS to be a boarding school - half the important stuff happens at night! Then there's the security. Having a child of my own reinforces my belief that children above all want security, and that's what Hogwarts offers Harry.”

Then, Rowling received a major emotional blow when her mother died on December 30, 1990. This tragedy inspired her to write Harry Potter as a boy longing for his dead parents, his anguish becoming "more deeper, more real" than in earlier drafts because she related to it herself. In a 2000 interview with The Guardian, Rowling also established that the character Wart of T.H. White's novel The Sword In the Stone is "Harry's spiritual ancestor." In this book, a child called Wart meets the mysterious sorcerer Merlyn, who grooms the hapless child into a noble, powerful warrior who later becomes King Arthur. Finally, she established that Harry was born on 31 July and thus shares his birthday with herself. However, she maintained, Harry is not directly based on any real-life character, "he came just out of a part of me".

In the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter makes his first appearance as the eponymous main protagonist of the novel. While writing the book, Rowling established that Harry Potter's parents have been killed by the powerful Dark Wizard Lord Voldemort; but for some reason, baby Harry survives when Voldemort tries to murder him with a Killing Spell. Voldemort is disembodied and Harry since then carries a mysterious scar on his forehead as a result. According to a 1999 interview with The Diane Rehm Show, fleshing out this backstory was a case of backwards planning: "The basic idea is that Harry  didn't know he was a wizard and so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. When he was one-year-old, the most evil wizard for hundreds and hundreds of years attempted to kill him. He killed Harry's parents, and then he tried to kill Harry - he tried to curse him. Harry has to find out, before we find out. And - so - but for some mysterious reason, the curse didn't work on Harry. So he's left with this lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead and the curse rebounded upon the evil wizard, who has been in hiding ever since".

As a result of this line of thought, Harry is written by Rowling as an orphan living miserably with his adopted family, the Dursley family, then is taken by half-giant Rubeus Hagrid to the magical academy of Hogwarts; there he finds out he has survived a Killing Curse by powerful Dark Wizard Lord Voldemort as a baby, befriends classmates Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and finally thwarts the return of Voldemort by denying him the eponymous Philosopher's Stone. He also forms intense personal rivalries with characters Draco Malfoy, a racist and elitist classmate, and cold, condescending Potions teacher Severus Snape, Draco's mentor. Both feuds continue throughout the entire series. In an 1999 interview, Rowling stated that Draco is based on several prototypical schoolyard bullies she encountered herself and Snape on a sadistic teacher of hers who abused his power.

Furthermore, Rowling stated that the Mirror of Erised chapter of the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is her favorite, where the mirror reflects Harry's deepest wish, namely to see his dead parents. Her favorite funny scene is when Harry inadvertently sets free a boa constrictor in the presence of the horrified Dursleys.

In the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling let Harry defeat Tom Marvolo Riddle, the spirit-form of Lord Voldemort, hidden in a secret diary which has possessed Ron's younger sister Ginny Weasley. In the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling let Harry go through a time travel adventure where he finds out that his parents have been betrayed by Voldemort's minion Peter Pettigrew and saves the lives of his godfather Sirius Black – who has been innocently imprisoned as a murderer for Pettigrew's crime – and the hippogriff Buckbeak. In both books, Harry was written as a child, but in the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Rowling stated that "Harry's horizons are literally and metaphorically widening as he grows older."

In the Goblet of Fire book, Rowling let Harry develop feelings for new character Cho Chang and in addition, established that Harry is surprisingly chosen for the famed Triwizard Tournament by the eponymous magical Goblet of Fire. In fact, all is an elaborate plan by Lord Voldemort's minion Barty Crouch Jr. to lure Harry into a trap, capture him and rebuild the body of Voldemort with Harry's blood. In the climax of this book, Harry and fellow Tournament participant Cedric Diggory are teleported to a graveyard. Harry is captured, Cedric killed, and Lord Voldemort is rebuilt in a gruesome ritual by his minion Peter Pettigrew. When Harry fights Lord Voldemort, their wands short-circuit; the spirit of Cedric and Harry's dead parents are drawn out of Voldemort's wand, they fight the Dark Lord, and Harry can escape with Cedric's corpse. For Rowling, this scene is very important for Harry; according to her, it establishes that Harry is "very, very brave", and by retrieving Cedric's corpse, he shows great selflessness and compassion, because "he wants to save Cedric's parents additional pain. He wants to bring back the body and treat it with respect". Rowling added that the idea of Harry saving the corpse of Cedric Diggory from the hands of Voldemort and the Death Eaters came from the classic scene in the Iliad where Achilles retrieves the body of his best friend Patroclus from the hands of Hector. The author said: "That [Iliad scene] really, really, REALLY moved me when I read that when I was 19. The idea of the desecration of a body, a very ancient idea... I was thinking of that when Harry saved Cedric's body." She also said that she cried while writing the scene when Harry's dead parents are drawn out of Voldemort's wand, the first time she cried while penning her story.

In the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Rowling introduced a new character, namely sadistic headmistress Dolores Umbridge, who puts Harry through a smear campaign to destroy his reputation. Harry becomes increasingly paranoid, almost grows estranged from his friends Ron and Hermione and comes to a point where he has a near mental breakdown. Rowling said putting Harry through extreme emotional stress was necessary to prove that Harry is emotionally vulnerable and thus human, in contrast to his nemesis Voldemort, who is emotionally invulnerable and thus inhuman: "Harry is a very human hero, and this is, obviously, there’s a contrast, between him, as a very human hero, and Voldemort, who has deliberately dehumanized himself and Harry, therefore, did have to reach a point where he did almost break down, and say he didn’t want to play anymore, he didn’t want to be the hero anymore – and he’d lost too much. And he didn’t want to lose anything else. So that – Phoenix was the point at which I decided he would have his breakdown." He even has to witness his godfather Sirius Black getting killed, but in the end, Harry thwarts Voldemort's plan to steal an important prophecy, and disgraces Umbridge, so Rowling stated: "And now he [Harry] will rise from the ashes strengthened." A side plot of Order of the Phoenix includes Harry further romancing Cho Chang, but the relationship never takes off. Rowling said: "They were never going to be happy, it was better that it ended early!"

In the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Rowling let Harry Potter hit puberty and made him "grumpy", using the teenage years of her own younger sister and herself as templates.  Rowling also made an intimate statement about the personal life of Harry: "Because of the demands of the adventure that Harry is following, he has had less sexual experience than boys of his age might have had". As a consequence, Harry's thoughts often revolve around Ginny Weasley, the sister of his best friend Ron, and he finally manages to romance her. This is a plot point which proves vital in the epilogue of the last book. In the main plot of the story, Harry finds out that his nemesis Lord Voldemort has split his soul into Horcruxes (i.e. fragments of his soul) to escape death, hunts the Horcruxes with Albus Dumbledore and finally has to endure seeing Dumbledore killed by Severus Snape. In a 2005 interview with NBC anchorwoman Katie Couric, Rowling stated that [after the happenings of the sixth book] Harry has "taken the view that they are now at war. He does become more battle hardened. He’s now ready to go out fighting. And he’s after revenge [against Voldemort and Snape]."

Final book

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry leaves Hogwarts with his friends Ron and Hermione and searches for Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes, in order to destroy them and at last defeat the Dark Lord. The three friends pit themselves against the totalitarian police state established by Voldemort, and according to Rowling, a remarkable scene in the book when Harry is forced to use the Crucio and Imperius spells (i.e. respectively spells to torture and mind-control others; both spells are considered unforgivable atrocities) when dealing with sinister henchmen of Lord Voldemort. Rowling explained that Harry is "flawed and mortal" and "he is also in an extreme situation and attempting to defend somebody very good against a violent and murderous opponent".

In the later parts of the book, Voldemort kills Snape, and Harry discovers that latter is a tragic anti-hero rather than a cold-blooded murderer. In the climax of the book, Voldemort uses the so-called Elder Wand (i.e. the most powerful wand ever created) against Harry and twice tries to murder him with Killing Spells, but the first one merely stuns Harry, and when tries to strike down Harry a second time, his spell rebounds, and Voldemort disembodies himself again, is "stunted", as Rowling called it, and defeated for good. According to Rowling, the difference between Harry and Voldemort is the fact that Harry accepts mortality, and thus Harry is stronger than his nemesis: "The real master of Death [i.e. someone like Harry] accepts that he must die, and that there are much worse things in the world of the living."

The Deathly Hallows epilogue is set 19 years later. Harry and Ginny are married, and have three children; James, the eldest, Albus Severus, and Lily. According to Rowling, adult Harry is working at the Auror Department at the Ministry of Magic with his best friend and brother-in-law Ron and is the department head. In the end, according to Rowling, his old rival Draco Malfoy also has given up the larger part of his animosity, because Harry has saved his life in the seventh book.

Movie appearances

In the five Harry Potter movies screened from 2001-2007, Harry Potter has been portrayed by British actor Daniel Radcliffe. Radcliffe was asked to audition for the role of Harry Potter in 2000 by producer David Heyman, while in attendance at a play named Stones in His Pockets in London.[18][19] The role of Harry Potter was highly lucrative for Radcliffe: as of 2007, he has an estimated wealth of £17 million.

In a 2007 interview with MTV, Radcliffe stated that for him, Harry Potter is a classic coming of age character: "That's what the films are about for me: a loss of innocence, going from being a young kid in awe of the world around him, to someone who is more battle-hardened by the end of it." He also said that for him, important factors in Harry's psyche are his survivor's guilt in regard to his dead parents and a lingering feeling of loneliness, so that Radcliffe talked to a bereavement counselor in order to prepare for his role. At one point, Radcliffe was quoted that he wished Harry to die in the books, but he clarified that he merely he "can't imagine any other way they can be concluded". After reading the last book, where Harry Potter and his friends survive and have children, Radcliffe stated to be glad about the ending and lauded author J. K. Rowling for the conclusion of the story.

Finally, Radcliffe stated that the question of how Harry Potter has influenced his life has been the most repeated question of his life, and regularly answers it has been "fine", and that he did not feel pigeonholed by the role, but rather sees it as a huge privilege to portray the character of Harry Potter.

According to author J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter is strongly guided by his own conscience, and has a keen feeling of what is right and what is wrong. Having "very limited access to truly caring adults", Rowling said, Harry "is forced to make his own decisions from early age on." He "does make mistakes", she conceded, but in the end, he does what his conscience tells him to do.[6] According to Rowling, one of Harry's pivotal scenes came in the fourth book, when he saves the corpse of his dead colleague Cedric Diggory from arch villain Lord Voldemort, because it shows he is both brave and unselfish.

Rowling also said that Harry's two worst character flaws are "anger and occasional arrogance”, but on the other hand, she said that Harry "is also innately honorable. He's not a cruel boy. He's competitive, and he's a fighter. He doesn't just lie down and take abuse. But he does have native integrity, which makes him a hero to me. He's a normal boy but with those qualities most of us really admire.” After the seventh book, Rowling complimented that Harry has the ultimate character strength, being is able to do what even Voldemort can not: he is not afraid of death anymore.

Rowling has also maintained that Harry is a suitable real-life role model for children: "The advantage of a fictional hero or heroine is that you can know them better than you can know a living hero, many of whom you would never meet if people like Harry and identify with him, I am pleased, because I think he is very likeable."

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