Griffiths also once advised Radcliffe to never let the camera catch him when he wasn’t thinking because the void would be read in his eyes; the veteran prefaced that counsel by saying it was told to him by Lee Marvin, who heard it from Spencer Tracy.

“Just think,” Radcliffe said, “how many young people get access to that sort of advice and that sort of history?”

But it’s Gary Oldman and Imelda Staunton who have left the biggest impression on Radcliffe. “To me those are the two that are just in the firmament,” Radcliffe said as he relaxed between takes. “All of them, everyone, has been brilliant, but those are the two that mean something special to me.”

His mother, Marcia Jeannine Gresham, told her son that as the “Potter” novels went along, she saw more of her son in the character and vice versa.

“She read ‘Half-Blood Prince’ and she did say, ‘Harry has started to argue like you argue,'” Radcliffe said with a roll of his eyes. “He is very good in analogies, and I also use a lot of semantics, and it does really irritate people into submission really. Obviously, J.K. Rowling actually had cameras in my house and knows that is how I argue...”

Radcliffe laughed but then grew a bit serious.

“I would like to think I haven’t been influenced by him too much just by playing him for so long,” Radcliffe said. “I am thrilled to have this in my life, but it is separate from my life, you know? It’s nice to be called Dan. And actually I started correcting people now. You do feel like a bit of an idiot doing that, but at the same time, in the long run it is better for us. I know it’s better for me.”