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Little orphan Danny

Daniel Radcliffe takes on the role of another child with no parents in December Boy.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 16, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Daniel Radcliffe plays an orphan once again in the new movie December Boys, but this time the Harry Potter star doesn't have any magical powers to help him navigate his adolescent angst.

In the coming-of-age drama set in 1960s Australia (scheduled to open Oct. 19 in the Tampa Bay area), Radcliffe plays the oldest of four boys at an orphanage who get to spend their Christmas holiday at the beach. The younger ones compete to be adopted by the families they meet, while Radcliffe's character falls hard for a pretty (and very assertive) local girl, with whom he shares cigarettes and his first sexual encounter.

It's the latest opportunity for the actor, who turned 18 in July, to show he's capable of much more than the role of Harry Potter, which has inspired teen girls to sob, flail and faint in his presence.

It can be hard to imagine him having regular-guy problems like doing laundry. But that was the first topic of a recent interview.

Sitting down on a couch, tugging at his stiff, dark jeans, Radcliffe says, "These are the only pants I have left because I haven't been able to wash stuff so frequently because we've been going from hotel to hotel, and prices on washing underwear, it's like extortion - it's, like, four dollars a pair of underwear."

Really? You could buy some new ones for less.

You probably could, actually, but then they weigh the case down. And so I'm wearing the only pants I have left as I do this interview.

So you do your own laundry then?

Yes. Well, I put it in the basket and it just suddenly comes back clean. My chores mainly revolve around keeping my room at an acceptable level of cleanliness and tidiness and just general standards of hygiene.

So what's all this about you doing Equus on Broadway? (He did the play, in which he did a nude scene, in London this year.)

Yeah, absolutely, hopefully. It's not absolutely certain yet, as nothing ever is, but yeah, that's definitely the plan. ... I'll be starting Harry Potter 6, and then that will go to the year 2040, and then after a few months - there's probably going to be a few months' gap in between that - and then Equus on Broadway. It should start late next year.

Everybody freaked out when you first got naked.

It was hilarious.

Why is that, do you think?

Because, I don't know, maybe they want me to be Peter Pan and stay young forever, some people. It's also, I think, a lot of it is media stirred-up.

[Last modified September 15, 2007, 23:31:00]