Q: This is the first time you've been in front of a camera since "The Tailor of Panama" and not playing Harry. The first day, did you sort of feel your forehead and miss the scar?

I did, now that you mention it! Actually in the Potter films I'm always getting in trouble for scratching my forehead and knocking the scar off, and on this one I would put my hand up here, and not feel it and worry.

Q. Did you have any of that when you went back to school after the first Harry Potter film? Classmates saying, he thinks he's so marvelous, he needs to be taken down a peg?

Well, I went to an English private school where there's just so many arrogant people that I would have fit in perfectly if I had been like that! You do get a lot of people who want to have a go at you, though, just because you're Harry Potter. ... People say it's jealousy, but I think it's spite, really. There's this feeling in the tabloid magazines that it's just open season on celebrities and that's permeated (everything).

Q: What you and your co-stars have gone through must be a little like what the Beatles did; you're having this very singular experience together and no one else can quite understand it.

I think that's true. It's a very, very strange existence, and I don't think anyone can imagine what it would be like. Just before you came in, I sent my friend a text saying 'Sorry, text you back in a bit, I'm going to do a press interview.' Very, very few 18-year-olds send those kind of text messages!

Q: Is that why I've never seen any pictures of you at clubs waving bottles of Hennessy around?

No, it's because I don't feel the need to, you know, get drunk in public. I'm not saying I don't drink, I do, you're allowed to in England at 18. But I have a drink with my friends at home. Falling down in public and all that -- it's a depressing, cynical thought, but there's a part of people that wants to see that. And I don't particularly want to give them that.