Daniel Radcliffe says he coped with Harry Potter fame by getting 'very drunk'

Daniel Radcliffe has admitted that heavy boozing was how he dealt with the rapid onset of fame that came with the Harry Potter movies.

However, it wasn’t too long until he realised that the answer wasn’t to be found at the bottom of a bottle.

Speaking on the US show Off Camera with Sam Jones, he said: “The quickest way to forget about the fact that you were being watched was to get very drunk.

“Then as you get very drunk, you become aware, ‘Oh, people are watching more now because now I’m getting very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more.’

Sounds like a good system. What could possibly go wrong?

Radcliffe, now 29, added that he thought all actors should be ‘crazy cool drunks’ and ‘delighted all the time’.

“You have a great job, you’re wealthy, you don’t have a right to not be excited about the thing all the time,” he went on.

“I think that’s a pressure as well. You suddenly start to feel, ‘Man, if I am just feeling some human emotion of sadness, does that mean I’m doing this wrong? Am I not good at being famous?’

He reveals that he decided to stop drinking in 2012.

“I have been unbelievably lucky with the people I had around me at certain times in my life. I met some really key people, some actors, some of them not, who just gave me great advice and really cared for me,” he said.

“It was just my own decision. I woke up one morning after a night, going, ‘This is probably not good.’”

Radcliffe was just 11 when he landed the lead role in the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, starring in all eight movies up to 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

He’s previously discussed his drinking, telling The Daily Telegraph in 2016 that he became ‘attracted to that chaos’.

“I can’t tell you what kind of drunk I am because I don’t remember what kind of drunk I am. I think I’m probably great – while I’m conscious,” he said.

“But then I have to be looked after and ultimately I don’t want to wake up to 20 text messages along the lines of, ‘Where are you? Dude, are you OK?’”

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