For actor Daniel Radcliffe, his time in the Harry Potter franchise wasn’t just his calling card as a performer and his first major gig, but also over a decade of his life. Speaking in a new interview with GQ, taking part in one of their trademark “Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters,” Radcliffe naturally had a lot to say about his work on the Wizarding World and the ten years he spent with the character. Among the things he revealed however is a major piece of stunt work that he took part in with one of the film’s and that he’ll never do it again.
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The stunt in particular was for the underwater portion of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, one that required a lot of free diving and breath-holding on Radcliffe’s part. He revealed, “There is so much on Potter that was so intense and so crazy you don’t even think about it at the time ’cause you’re just like, ‘yeah, they’re building a tank where D stage used to be, they’re just like building a tank and they’re gonna be filming underwater for six weeks. I had like a log book of all the hours that I’d done underwater. It was really cool I’ve heard that we averaged like seven seconds of footage a day of usable footage. But again, those are one of those things that you go like, I will never do that again and if I do I’ll be one of the only people who’s done it before. It was one of those moments that you look back and you go, God that’s special.”
Radcliffe also opened up about filming another underwater scene, this time for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, calling it another moment of disbelief for him as a performer.
“One shot on the sixth film I think where I’d start off underneath the water and I was on a wire so I was holding myself by rope under the surface of the water and then on action I let go and they pulled me on the wire. So I flew out of the water and there was like a ring of fire around me so I was just like bursting out of the surface of the water through a ring of fire. It’s phenomenal that they allowed me to do that myself and like again, I’ll never probably be on a job where they do let me do that kind of stuff.”
All eight Harry Potter movies are currently streaming on Peacock.
