Daniel Radcliffe Admits He Nearly Quit Harry Potter After Azkaban

Well, I’d think anybody would have some trouble going back to work after a prison sentence, but –

What? Azkaban is fictional and Daniel Radcliffe is real? I’ve misinterpreted my own headline? This joke isn’t really funny? Well, then.

Daniel Radcliffe has told The Guardian about a time when he seriously considered leaving the Harry Potter franchise for fear of being pigeonholed.

“By the third film, I thought, if there’s a time to get out, it’s now; there’s still enough time for another actor to come in and establish himself. For a while I thought, if I do all of them, will I be able to move on to other stuff or should I start doing other stuff now?”

Pretty deep thoughts for a kid who was fourteen or fifteen at the time. The franchise has its share of recast characters, most notably Hogwarts headmaster and mentor figure Albus Dumbldore, who, due to the death of Richard Harris, was recast with Michael Gambon, but I think the series would have struggled to continue under the burden of recasting Harry Potter himself. Obviously, and as he says himself, Radcliffe came to accept that he’d always be associated with the franchise.

“I know that Potter is going to be with me for the rest of my life, so to try to set a goal where nobody talks about that anymore is stupid. It would be like… Paul McCartney might have gone on to do a lot of other things, but people are always going to want to talk about the Beatles.

It’s just a fact of your life, so you can’t get annoyed by it or resent it. You have to embrace the fact that you were involved in this incredibly cool thing that did wonders for the British film industry and though you might not always be happy with the work you did on it, the opportunity it has given you to forge a career for yourself is amazing.”

For my money I think Radcliffe is doing a pretty good job of making sure that people can cite things he’s been in besides Harry Potter, even if it HP is usually the first thing mentioned. There’s something to be said of starring in a horror flick, a Broadway musical, and as a nude horse stabber one of your first non-franchise roles for making sure people can remember at least one thing you’ve done other than Harry Potter.

(via Blastr.)