Daniel Radcliffe talks Beat poets, rapping, British politics and future projects
Daniel Radcliffe has been busy recently giving interviews in the UK to promote his many upcoming projects. Firstly, he appears on the cover of British magazine Shortlist. The actor stars in the magazine’s crime special edition, which features Daniel dressed as a pulp fiction author. The interview says about Daniel that
“There’s a sense that he isn’t simply a canny young upstart trying to shrug off Potter pigeonholing with a couple of well-placed ‘leftfield’ and grown-up roles. Radcliffe is leftfield. He’s an eccentric, somewhat intense oddity, unafraid to test the boundaries and probably get it wrong here and there.
In the interview Daniel talks about his role in Kill Your Darlings and his own love for the Beat poets, whom he discovered when he was a teenager.
“His mandatory teenage Beat poetry phase came courtesy of friends passing him difficult books to mull over. He wasn’t a fan of On the Road, “but Burroughs I loved,” he says. “This guy doesn’t go along with any of the rules of writing a book. He just doesn’t care. Someone handed me a copy of Naked Lunch when I was 15 and said ‘you’re not meant to understand it.”
The interview also discusses Daniel’s own love of singing and writing and the poetry he wrote and published as a teenager. He admits that,
“I used to think I was very good, but they’re not as good as I thought. There are about five of them I still look at, and think ‘that’s OK.”
But he says, “There is nothing less cool than pretending to be someone you’re not.”
Daniel further discusses how much he would like to write and direct films one day, although at the moment he is still very in demand in front of the camera, appearing in three films at the recent Toronto International Film festival.
Daniel talks about being a “frustrated frontman” and how much he enjoys rapping and karaoke. His future projects, Frankenstein and Gold, are also discussed, which brings him to the current political state in Russia.
It is not only Russian politics that Daniel has been discussing, however. The actor is also featured in the Radio Times, where he speaks about his attitude toward British politics. Daniel said that he found modern politics “disillusioning.” “The first time I voted, I felt I had graduated as a full member of society,” the actor said.
“I do vote – I think it’s important,” he says. “I think the next thing I’m going to get excited about is Eddie Izzard running for London mayor. He’s really interesting, super-smart and brings a huge amount of integrity – something that we definitely don’t have today.”
The full Radio Times interview is available to read in the magazine, which is on sale now in the UK.
You can read the full Shortlist interview here. The magazine is on sale now in the UK.
A Young Doctor’s Notebook returns to Sky Arts on November 21. To watch an interview with Daniel about the new series visit the Sky Arts website here. Kill Your Darlings is in UK cinemas from December 6.