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Why Daniel Radcliffe wasn’t starstruck by his Harry Potter costars

By Sarabeth Pollock

NEW YORK - JULY 09: Actors Michael Gambon, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Alan Rickman attend the "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" premiere at Ziegfeld Theatre on July 9, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
NEW YORK - JULY 09: Actors Michael Gambon, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Alan Rickman attend the "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" premiere at Ziegfeld Theatre on July 9, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images) /
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The Harry Potter movies were jam-packed with big names: Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, Alan Rickman as Professor Snape, and that’s just the start.

You’d think that anybody working with all these titans would be intimidated, but Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter himself, wasn’t phased. “At the time I wasn’t starstruck by any of those people,” he said during a recent appearance on The Stephen Colbert Show.

Radcliffe was 9 years old when he first played the titular wizard in J.K. Rowling’s best-selling series, so he didn’t know the reputations of many of the stars he was working with until he was older, by which point he already knew them personally. “[W]hen you meet someone as a 9-year-old it’s sort of hard to lie, gain starstruckness of them later on,” he quipped.

Daniel Radcliffe says he was starstruck by Gary Oldman on Harry Potter

“The first person I remember being starstruck by was Gary Oldman,” Radcliffe said of his Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban co-star, who played Sirius Black. “That was the age when I was aware of who he was and his work and also getting more serious about acting myself.”

From Michael Gambon to Helena Bonham Carter to Emma Thompson, the list of big-time actors who worked on the Harry Potter franchise reads like a seating chart at the Academy Awards. With the success of the book series, everyone in Hollywood wanted to be part of the film franchise; it’s almost hard to find actors who didn’t appear in at least one of the movies.

Now that he’s older and an established actor himself, it’s fun to think of the conversations Radcliffe has when he sees Harry Potter alums at awards shows or movie premieres. Without even realizing it at the time, he’d been working with the cream of the acting crop, and his costars watched him grow up. It’s a very unique, special experience, and it’s one of the many reasons Harry Potter is one of the most beloved franchises ever.

Next. All eight Harry Potter movies are on HBO Max. dark

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