British actor Daniel Radcliffe who sealed his name in the history books of cinema as Harry Potter was not keen to take on the role initially. There was a time when he wanted to bid adieu to the acting profession. Casting director Janet Hirshenson who brought Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and him on board had shared the story of Radcliffe’s casting in great detail. In 2015, she told Huffington Post that author JK Rowling had a demand that only Brit actors should be cast. Also, she wanted a boy with green eyes. Janet said, “For Harry, to complicate things, I needed a blue or green-eyed kid because part of Harry is his green eyes or blue-green, but they couldn’t be brown eyes, so that was another elimination thing. We said, ‘Oh, drat! He’s great, but he has brown eyes.”
It seems filmmaker Chris Columbus and David Heyman were rather impressed with Radcliffe but he was not keen to pursue acting at that time. It seems Heyman told Radcliffe to just give a thought about auditioning for the fantasy blockbuster. Hirshenson stated, “One evening, David Heyman the producer went to the theatre and he knew Daniel’s father, who was an agent … so the producer ran into Daniel and his dad and said to Daniel, ‘Why don’t you come in and audition? Think about it.” The young man agreed and the rest is history, as we say!
It seems a lot of hard work went in on zeroing down the perfect Harry Potter. It finally boiled down to Daniel Radcliffe and one more actor. She said, “We went back and looked at Daniel again. The other kid was terrific and very vulnerable and very Harry-looking, but besides that, Harry was going to become a very powerful kid, too. And Daniel had both sides. He was very vulnerable, but the other kid ― it was like, he [was] not going to have the balls that Daniel has, to put it that way.” It seems the three actors were brought to Chris Columbus’ office and given a surprise that they had been selected. The three bonded well instantly and we could see the rapport onscreen.
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