The actor Daniel Radcliffe remembers the period when he resorted to alcohol to escape the problems caused by the fame from the Harry Potter series. The subject came up during an interview to the American program Off Camera With Sam Jones, exhibit on Wednesday (20), but in 2012 he had already admitted his alcohol addiction during his adolescence.
Radcliffe, who became famous as a child, said that being drunk was the only way he found to ignore the attention that people gave him and to pretend to himself that he was not being observed. “And then as you get very drunk, you become aware that ‘Oh, people are watching more now because now I’m getting very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more” , he said.
To the British magazine Heat, in 2012, he said that he had already shown up alcoholized to some of the Harry Potter shootings. “I don’t want to go into details, but I drank a lot and it was daily – I mean nightly. I can honestly say I never drank at work on Harry Potter, I went into work still drunk, but I never drank at work. I can point to many scenes where I’m just gone. Dead behind the eyes”, he said.
Daniel also detailed his problems with alcoholism to the British magazine GQ, also in 2012. He said that it was necessary a few years to overcome the alcohol problems. “I woke up one morning after a night going like, this is probably not good”, he recalls.
The actor recognizes that restoring to alcohol was an irresponsible way to deal with his problems, but critiques the pressure on famous people to be happy at all times. “You have a great job, you’re wealthy — you don’t have a right to ever feel sad”, he complained.
This experience helped him become more comprehensible to other artists. “There’s no blueprint for starting young, that’s like when people have a go at Justin Bieber and drag racing cars. I’m like, yeah, but you know, I don’t know — stuff could be super crazy for him right now’.”
Radcliffe assured, however, that he always cared a lot about his work, even with the problems. “Even at the lowest point, I still loved my job so much, I loved going to set. There was never a point where I was like, ‘Oh, I wish this hadn’t happened to me, I wish I wasn’t Harry Potter.’”
Collaborated: Pedro Martins
Translated into English by Paola Galiano
Edited by Aline Michel
