Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is heading to Broadway for his first musical. The 20-year-old actor has been announced as the lead for How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Radcliffe is already used to the pressures of nightly Broadway and West End appearances, having wowed critics in Equus last year. He will play the plum part of J. Pierrepont Finch, a window cleaner who rises to the top of a huge company while, of course, wooing and winning a girl along the way. Robert Morse created the role on Broadway and in the 1967 screen adaptation. The original production, running for a healthy 1,417 performances, won the top Tony for best musical in 1962 as well as six more, including awards for lead Morse and supporting player Charles Nelson Reilly. And the 1995 saw Matthew Broderick win the lead actor Tony. Radcliffe is currently filming the final instalments of the Harry Potter movies, Deathly Hallows, which will be released in two parts.

This is FANTASTIC news!! I suspect that this is but the beginning of a long and storied carrer on the stage. I was lucky enough to see Radcliffe in Equus and was stunned by his performance. I have no doubt that he will be just as superb in this new role in How to Succeed. I have been nothing but impressed with every acting performance I’ve seen from the lad and I have been wondering what his future career in acting holds for him. I suspect he will make a great name for himself on the musical theater stage. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he gave up films altogether and stuck with plays and musicals. Time will tell what other projects DanRad will take on but I, for one, am very excited about the prospect of seeing Daniel Radcliffe on the Broadway stage again.

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HARRY Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has confessed in a frank interview to a gay magazine – he is a Liberal Democrat. The handsome actor – who turned 20 yesterday – appears on the latest cover of Attitude and inside reveals his true political feelings. He tells of his deep dislike for Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron. The multi-millionaire also tells how he grew up surrounded by his parents’ gay pals and hates anyone with a homophobic attitude. Radcliffe – who is not gay and is dating actress Laura O’Toole – said: “I just loathe homophobia. It’s just disgusting and animal and stupid and it’s just thick people who can’t get their heads around it and are just scared. “I grew up around gay people entirely. I was the only child in my class who had any experience of homosexuality or anything like that.” The actor – who battles soul-sucking Dementors as the boy wizard and is currently starring in Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince – said he supports Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg because the other parties offer nothing to young people. He said: “I rather like Nick Clegg. At the next election I will almost certainly vote Lib Dem. “If all the people who liked them voted for them you could change politics overnight and we could have a proper three party system.” Asked about Gordon Brown he said: “Paul Merton said, and I agree with him, ‘it’s a tragedy that this man has waited all his life to do this job – and now he finds out he can’t do it.’ “I don’t like the New Labour thing. I never experienced the optimism of New Labour, I was too young but I hear everyone was up and it was fantastic. I’ve only seen the bad years of it.” Radcliffe’s opinion on David Cameron is no more positive. He raged: “No! No, no, no, no, no! David Cameron is barely distinguishable from Tony Blair.” He added: “I think the reason why people don’t vote is because the politicians are all so central now, it doesn’t seem to matter who you vote for.” He also blasted the BNP who won two seats in the recent Euro elections, saying: “I hate any type of prejudice.”

Attaboy … there aren’t many young people who are willing and capable of expressing their political beliefs in such an open manner but Daniel Radcliffe never struck me as the type of person to play coy with his beliefs. The young man has impressed me on numerous occasions and this is but the latest. That, as a straight actor, he would appear on the cover of one of the UK’s most successful gay magazines and talk so candidly about his beliefs is quite a feat. The lad is very intelligent and very well-spoken … he really is a great role model that younger kids can look up to. DanRad is a great guy … I wish more young actors were like him.

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Always keeping his lips tightly sealed when he is asked about his love life, Daniel Radcliffe finally reveals his dating partner. “My girlfriend is Laura O’Toole, and she was in ‘Equus’ with me. But I don’t really want to talk about that, because she’s not here and it’s not fair,” the British actor tells U.K. OK! Magazine. Daniel and Laura were co-stars in a revival of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play “Equus”. Laura was known as the understudy for the lead female character of Jill, played by Joanna Christie, who engaged in a lengthy nude sex scene with Daniel’s character Alan Strang. Report that Daniel dating Laura, who is four years his senior, first emerged in November 2007 after they played together in the particular play. They were said to be “very close” and were even photographed enjoying a shopping trip together in Fullham, West London. Back in January 2008, the “Harry Potter” leading actor was said splitting from Laura. Their separation reportedly took place in late 2007. News of the World quoted the female star as confirming, “Daniel and I are still good friends and have a good time when we see each other. But we just have to be realistic.” However, Daniel has confirmed to OK! Magazine that he and Laura never parted ways.

I’d say that all those nights appearing on stage together totally nekkid might’ve had some influence on these two actors getting together. I imagine, first, they took comfort in the fact that they were both bearing more than their souls on a nightly basis in front of sold out audiences. Then, I suspect the hormonal part took over … and voila! Dan has always talked about how he enjoys the company of older women, I suspect those comments were a secret nod to his older girlfriend. I’m glad to know that DanRad is gettin’ some lovin’. He strikes me as solid young man and deffo deserves happiness. Dan and Laura make a cute couple, no?

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If Potions Professor Horace Slughorn had mixed a brew to conjure up torrential rain, the weather could not have been worse for the premiere of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” Dedicated fans braved thunder, lightning and Biblical downpours in London’s Leicester Square to catch a glimpse of the film’s stars arriving at the opening of the sixth film in the wildly popular “Harry Potter” franchise. While dreadful weather has become an unfortunate tradition at Potter premieres (it rained during the 2007 premiere of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”), the latest installment holds something new for fans. “The Half-Blood Prince” offers up an uncommonly large helping of humor as Harry, Hermione and Ron enter their sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “I think this film’s funnier,” said star Daniel Radcliffe who plays the titular young hero. “There are a couple of moments which I laughed out loud at.” Hormones are also running high inside the castle walls, with romances blossoming between some of the formerly chaste characters. But, says director David Yates, for all the romance and humor, the film still has a very dark side. “It is a bit bipolar,” Yates told CNN. “On the one hand, there’s all this snogging and romance and on the other hand people are getting killed and bridges are being blown up.” “The humor is there to kind of leaven the intensity of what happens later on in the movie,” he added. If the latest Harry Potter installment treads more adult terrain, it’s not just because the three lead actors — who started as unknown children — have grown up. The three have amassed huge fortunes and international recognition off the back of the films. Daniel Radcliffe wowed Broadway by going nude in “Equus,” Emma Watson has become the face of Burberry and Rupert Grint recently hit the headlines with a dose of swine flu. A dark storyline runs through the core of “The Half-Blood Prince”: The ascendancy of the malevolent Lord Voldemort threatens the wizarding world, while tragic events provide some genuinely scary moments and spell the end of childhood for Harry and the others. “I think it’s aimed at a slightly older audience,” says Emma Watson, 19, who plays bookish heroine Hermione Granger in the franchise. “I think the films have grown up with the audience” … Fans have had to wait an extra eight months for the latest installment after Warner Bros (which, like CNN, is owned by Time Warner) delayed the release of the movie after the success of “The Dark Knight” to spread out its blockbusters. It is estimated the film cost $250 million to make. The last film, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” came out in 2007 and took $938 million at the box office worldwide. The five films have so far made $4.5 billion in worldwide box office, making it the most successful movie franchise in history. The Harry Potter franchise is based on the best-selling series of books by British writer J.K Rowling. The first film, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” directed by Chris Columbus, was released in 2001.

OMG RELEASE THIS MOVIE ALREADY!!! We still have about a week left to wait for the film to hit theaters and I’m already freakin’ out about it. The Harry Potter story gets seriously serious in Half-Blood Prince and I can’t wait to see it on the big screen. Even tho those Londoners had to get soaked to the bone at last night’s premiere, I envy that they’ve been able to see the film already. I can’t even wait any more … Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens in theaters on July 15. Are y’all as excited as I am?

[Photo credit: Splash News; Source]

Daniel Radcliffe, the British actor who plays boy wizard Harry Potter, laughed off suggestions he has become a heartthrob on the eve of Tuesday’s premiere of the sixth film of the series. Radcliffe, 19, who won the role of Harry as a cherubic 11-year-old, has updated his image by appearing naked on stage in the play “Equus” between filming recent adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally successful books. But he said most fans still think of him as the bespectacled Harry. “If girls like me, it has not been proven yet,” Radcliffe told journalists ahead of the London premiere of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”. “OK, I go to the red carpet in Tokyo and thousands of girls scream at me… but the me that sits in a darkened room watching cricket for eight hours with a bowl of pasta in his underwear and socks is not quite so attractive to girls.” Radcliffe admitted in an interview that the male actors on the Potter set had felt male hormones kick as they grew into adolescence on the set, telling Esquire magazine: “We were all unbelievably horny from about the third film to probably about the end of the fifth; then it all settled down.” But Emma Watson, who plays the geeky Hermione Granger in the films, said fans should forget any hopes of her, Radcliffe and Rupert Grint — who plays the gawky Ron Weasley in the films — pairing off with each other in real life. “When we were younger, we were always going back and forth to school so it is not as if Rupert and Dan were the only boys I saw,” the 19-year-old said at the news conference. “I know it would be of huge interest to the media if we were hooking up. But we grew up together and we are just like siblings. There have not been any pairings like that (among the cast), I’m afraid.”

Horniness at Hogwart’s? Duhvs. I don’t think anyone doubted that … but I do believe Emma Watson’s assertion that the actors never philandered together in real life. As we know by now, Radcliffe likes himself an older woman … so while the Harry Potter kids may have, shall we say, blossomed during the course of making the Harry Potter films, I highly doubted that they blossomed with one another (at least not the main kids). After the jump, check out an alternate cover of British Esquire magazine with Daniel Radcliffe on the cover along with some photos from his photospread …

HMMM … while I find the “beat-up” photos a bit cheesy, I still love Daniel. I can’t wait to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when it opens in 2 weeks ;)

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In this Sunday’s issue of PARADE, Daniel Radcliffe talks about breaking free of his Harry Potter image and finding love with older women.

Shocking audiences with a nude love scene on Broadway:
“As soon as we started doing the show, people went, ‘Oh! So this is not pornography—this is a play,’ It was mainly hyped beforehand. I didn’t set out to shock people. I set out to do something different from Potter. If I had wanted to shock people I would have played, you know, a gay drug dealer.”

I’ve talked at some length of my respect for Daniel Radcliffe as an actor and as an artist and this interview with Parade goes a long way in fortifying that respect. The young man deffo has his head on straight and has the talent to make it very far in the biz. After the jump, check out the rest of the photos from his Parade mag photospread …

You can read the full interview online HERE or look for it in this week’s issue of Parade in your weekend newspaper. After being so disappointed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I am very much looking forward to Half-Blood Prince (in theaters next month) which promises to be a big blockbuster movie with an actual intelligent storyline.

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There are other more spoilery photos but I don’t want to post too many pics this early in the filming. We’ve got plenty of time to see little teaser pics from the set. Deathly Hallows is going to be an epic film, I can just feel it. The book itself is too huge to be contained by just one movie. The film will prolly be the one Harry Potter movie that will contain almost all of the best bits from the book. Previously, the films had to cut content to fit in the time constraints. This 2 part film will have lots of time to do the final Harry Potter book justice. But … while all of this Hallows talk is very exciting, we still have The Half-Blood Prince to look forward to this Summer. So much Harry Potter!! Woot!

[Photo credit: Splash News]

While it is very exciting that production is finally underway on the movie(s) version of the final HP book, it’s a bit sad that it’s all coming to an end again. When The Deathly Hallows was released in book form back in 2007, it was met with great enthusiasm as well as great sadness. The finality of the story was bittersweet to many (me included). The release of the special book The Tales of Beadle the Bard was a nice little Harry Potter treat to snack on last Xmas but now that the book series is finished there is nothing really to look forward to anymore. The HP movies, at least, provide that outlet of looking forward … but once these films are finished and released — that’s it. JK Rowling has hinted that she may return to the world of Harry Potter in some way again in the future but I’m not sure I’m ready to hold my breath just yet. As I mentioned before, I’m planning on rereading the entire series in the coming months in order to refresh my memory and get back into the world of Harry Potter again. I am anxious to see The Half-Blood Prince this Summer … and The Deathly Hallows thereafter. Now that production has begun on the Deathly movie(s) it won’t be very long until we’ll be talking about that film in the theaters, too.

[Photo credit: INFdaily]

“Harry Potter” co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Tony and Olivier Award winner Richard Griffiths end[ed] their run in the limited engagement of Equus — Peter Shaffer’s gripping play about the bewildering crime of a teen-age boy — Feb. 8 at 3 PM at the Broadhurst Theatre. [T]he acclaimed revival will have played 21 previews and 156 regular performances. Previews began Sept. 5, 2008, with an official opening Sept. 25. Radcliffe and Griffiths, who played to sold-out crowds in the London revival of the Shaffer play, reprised their work for Broadway audiences. Radcliffe stars as Alan Strang with Griffiths as Dr. Martin Dysart. Ever-busy stage and screen actress Kate Mulgrew plays Hesther Saloman, the role created on Broadway by veteran actress Marian Seldes in 1974. In Equus, “psychiatrist Martin Dysart investigates the blinding of six horses, a savage act committed by an unassuming 17-year-old stable boy, Alan Strang, whose family life is rife with bigotry and religious fervor. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy’s demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.” Playwright Shaffer based the play on a true story told to him by a friend … Thea Sharrock, who directed the London run, directed on Broadway as well. The creative team also features set and costume designer John Napier, lighting designer David Hersey and sound designer Gregory Clarke. Radcliffe made his West End leading-role debut in Shaffer’s 1973 drama at London’s Gielgud Theatre on Feb. 27, 2007, following previews that began Feb. 16. Radcliffe drew positive reviews from the London critics and lots of attention from gossip columnists because of the much-written-about nude scene. Equus bowed on Broadway in October 1974 at the Plymouth Theatre. The production — directed by John Dexter — won the 1975 Tony for Best Play and ran 1,209 performances. The current production marks the show’s first Broadway revival.

Alas … no more nekkid Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway any longer. I’m not sure how many of you were able to see the production during its run but I was very lucky to be able to see it back in September when it was still in previews. I have a sneaking suspicion that the play will do very well with Tony Award nominations later on this year. Radcliffe, Griffiths and Mulgrew are all superb theater actors and I will happily support the nomination of any of them for Tony Awards. I guess we’ll see if those noms will come to pass. And so, as we bid farewell to Equus on Broadway, let’s think back and remember those naughty NSFW nekkid pics of Daniel Radcliffe on stage during one of his performances. If a bold performance in the nude isn’t worth a Tony, then I don’t know what is ;)

[Photo credit: Splash News; Source]