Daniel Radcliffe Once Shared He Was Bullied at School Because of ‘Harry Potter’
The Harry Potter franchise changed Daniel Radcliffe’s life in more ways than one. And although the series brought much good fortune to the star, in the beginning it also caused a few problems in his personal life.
The young actor once opened up that some teased him because of his stardom. And it eventually all culminated into a physical altercation.
Daniel Radcliffe once shared that he’d rather be on set than at school
Radcliffe once opened up about how his Harry Potter casting helped inspire his passion for acting in general. His parents at one point tried to dissuade the star from pursuing the profession. With both having tried out acting themselves, they didn’t want Radcliffe to relive their own experiences with the industry.
But after becoming the boy wizard, Radcliffe fell in love with acting. So much so that he genuinely enjoyed being on set.
“I feel like film sets are places of just immense comfort for me,” Radcliffe told The Off Camera Show. “I feel very at home there. I know what I’m doing there more than I know what I’m doing in any other situation that I find myself in.”
Radcliffe also preferred film sets to school, which was a place he didn’t particularly enjoy.
“I never got on with schooling very well. I was not athletic, particularly. I’m certainly not academic. So, I didn’t particularly enjoy it,” he said.
Which made Radcliffe enjoy shooting movies even more.
“One of the great draws of doing TV and film in the beginning was like it gets me out of school,” he added. “It gets me out of there.”
Daniel Radcliffe once opened up about being bullied at school over ‘Harry Potter’ fame
Radcliffe also didn’t enjoy his time at school because of how some peers treated him. He didn’t see himself as too different from most of the other kids in school back then. But in a 2009 interview with Esquire(via Mirror), he felt singled out because of his stardom.
“I wasn’t the most popular kid because they wanted to give me a lot of crap and I wasn’t willing to take it,” he said.
However, The Lost City star only resorted to violence when he saw someone he had issues with bullying another classmate.
“I was 14, he was 19. There’d been a bit of animosity between us already and he was being horrible to a kid I knew, so I pulled him off this other bloke and he punched me in the face,” he said.
How Daniel Radcliffe avoided burning out like other child actors
Hollywood is full of stories about child actors who would later burn out or find themselves involved in several scandals and controversies. For the most part, the Harry Potter cast has managed to avoid this fate. In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Radcliffe theorized why he didn’t go off the rails like other child actors.
“It’s very hard to say, I think a huge amount of it does obviously come down to my parents,” Radcliffe said. “It comes down to other people, a lot of the people I’ve already mentioned, on Potter who were able to give me enough perspective on my life, and help me at key moments, that I’ve stayed where I want to be.”
Radcliffe also explained why he thought other child stars didn’t fair as well.
“I think a huge problem for people is that, for a lot of people, they get into a situation where they start doing something when they’re ten, they are committed for several years, they stop enjoying it, they are by that point the breadwinner for their family,” he said.
Radcliffe believed this eventually led to too much pressure for the child star that would take its toll.
