Daniel Radcliffe, now 33, portrays the comedy songwriter in the parody biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story with Evan Rachel Wood playing Madonna.  We went back into our extensive archives of exclusive HFPA interviews to see how the British actor, then 12 and 13-years-old, together with his young co-stars, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, talked to the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press about playing Harry Potter in the first two movies of the saga based on the novels by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerers’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), both directed by Chris Columbus.

Radcliffe was getting ready to shoot the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, to be directed by Alfonso Cuarón.

This what the then 10-year-old Radcliffe said he did in order to get cast as Harry Potter, following open casting calls with hundreds of kids: “To get the part I sent in this application and a photo of myself to the “Newsround” television program. I waited weeks and months, and nothing happened. Then I sent them a video of myself, dressed up as my drama teacher, who was a girl, so that was pretty scary. I did this rap song about how much I wanted to be in the film, I made this speech and sent it into the casting agency, then I got an audition. I wasn’t confident at all, but I went in with a certain amount of hope and a belief in myself because if you don’t have that, there’s not much point in auditioning. I was actually in the bath at the time the call came, I heard the phone, and my dad went down to get it, I heard him say ‘Hello David’ and it was producer David Heyman, and I thought it was a letdown message to say I didn’t get the part, but then my dad came up and told me that I did get it, and I just started to cry I was so happy.”

He added that his parents were only concerned that he might be disappointed, since he had gone through similar uncertainty before being cast in David Copperfield (1999) directed by Simon Curtis from the 1850 novel by Charles Dickens and The Tailor of Panama (2001) by John Boorman with Pierce Brosnan:  “Both of my parents used to be actors, then my mother became a casting director and my father a literary agent, but my mother didn’t cast Harry Potter, don’t worry. They were just protecting me from getting my hopes up high and then not getting the part, as they did when I’d been up for David Copperfield and Tailor of Panama, which I had been really lucky to get. When I got the part of David Copperfield I wasn’t aware of how famous all these actors were and it was only during the filming that I realized that, because I kept seeing photos of them, then I was suddenly aware of all that, but I didn’t get overawed because they all made me feel so comfortable.”

Radcliffe had already read the first three books of the Harry Potter saga, but read the first book again after being cast and developed a different vision of Harry: “I first read the books when I was eight or nine, and I wasn’t really into reading any books then, because I found it hard to sit down and really concentrate on a book. I actually imagined Harry as the illustration from the front of the books, where all the characters were cartoons.  That was my vision of Harry until now, when I can’t really avoid thinking of me as Harry.  Then when I got the part, I re-read the first book and I couldn’t believe that I was going to be doing this movie, because it was so amazing, but after seeing the sets, that really brought out what  it would look like.  My favorite books now are the Harry Potter books, the “Cirque Du Freak” Trilogy by Darren Shan, “Holes” by Lewis Sachar, and I love the Terry Pratchett books, they’re very funny.”

This was young Radcliffe’s explanation of why those Harry Potter books became so popular: “It might be because the idea of magic is so amazing, you know, if you could do magic, you could do anything, it is a great thought to have that ability, and that’s why we all like reading about Harry.  I definitely believe in magic, I always had a belief that it manifests itself in subtle ways, even if it is not immediately obvious how it works. And if I could have a magic power, I would like to be invisible because then I could sneak into rock concerts and stuff like that.”

Radcliffe got along very well with his costars, and the two boys didn’t mind that the girl was the smartest: “We all got on really well throughout the film, because we were all, within reason, quite like our characters, who have a really strong bond so we have a really strong bond. It’s fun to work with Emma because she’s great and very funny, and it’s true that she’s smarter than the two of us boys put together. If we ever get into trouble with our homework, we can just ask Emma, so we treat her in life like we do in the film.”

This was the actor’s opinions about the author of the books: “J.K. Rowling is everything you want her to be, because she is really kind and obviously really imaginative, she is very funny and a great person to be around. She is so cool.”

When interviewed the following year, after the release of the first movie, Radcliffe said that that film success had not affected him: “If it was really going to change my life, that would have happened by now, and my life has changed surprisingly little. I still see my friends, I keep in really good contact with all my friends at school, I learn the same stuff that they do and I’m doing my exams very soon. So I think everything is going to be fun and I’ve just got to enjoy it. The only big difference is that sometimes people come up to me on the streets and talk to me about the film, but that is great because they’re always so enthusiastic, and it’s kind of nice.  It’s great, because if you are famous and in films, you get the fabulous opportunity to inspire people, and that’s an amazing thing to be able to do. For me it’s all about playing a character that has inspired children all over the world. It’s really exciting and an honor to play Harry, plus his loyalty and the importance of his friends was really great to act out.”

This is what Radcliffe said he learned from playing Harry Potter: “What I’ve learned from Harry is how important friends are to anybody, because Harry comes from a background where he’s never known his parents, and he doesn’t even like his closest living relatives. So for me Harry’s family are his friends and that’s what took away from playing Harry, that friendship is so important.”

These are the young actors that he looked up to: “There are so many amazing adult actors who started out as a kid, like Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey Maguire, and certainly those are the role model that I have. So I hope to do as well as they’ve done.”