Harry Potter has a lot of girls really quite agitated, all over the world…
Radcliffe: I never ever cease to find that very odd. In Japan, they scream and scream all the time when I make a personal appearance, and I honestly wonder why. I’ve sort of got used to it now when I’m on the red carpet for a premiere or whatever, but I still think inside, “Why me?” I can tell you that the Daniel Radcliffe who does all the press conferences and all the premieres is a very different guy from the one that you’ll find at home in my flat, wearing a t-shirt and underpants, eating popcorn and watching cricket on the tele with the curtains drawn. That is the real me. And it’s not a very appealing image, is it?

Of the Harry Potter’s that you’ve done so far, your favorite is…?
Radcliffe: The fifth one—for two reasons. The first is that Gary Oldman was in it, and I love that man’s work, and the second was that there was no bloody Quidditch in it. That is really torture, having to do the Quidditch games. It’s more than several steps up from discomfort—it’s pain! Gary, thank God, has become a good mate, and something of a mentor. He’s a guy with a supremely sane head on his shoulders.

Who else do you admire?
Radcliffe: Kenneth Branagh, he’s a great bloke. He first suggested doing Equus.

If you had to be somewhere else today, you would be where?
Radcliffe: At a really good cricket match. Tom Felton, who plays Malfoy, my sworn enemy in the movies, and I are really the best of mates, and I’d love to be somewhere with him watching a first rate game. Only trouble is that we are recognized everywhere…Tom has had his hair bleach-blonde for the last few years for his character, and it really makes him stand out. At least I can take off Harry’s glasses when I walk off the set!

What’s next?
Radcliffe: There are a few projects on the boil, but the one that I am really interested in is based on the real-life story of a photo-journalist, Dan Eldon, who was only 22 when he was killed by an angry mob in Somalia. A really heroic guy. We are waiting for the green light for that one, and it all depends on the funding we want.

If you weren’t acting, you would be…?
Radcliffe: Reading. Anything. I love books.

You’re currently filming the last two films in the Harry Potter franchise.
Emma Watson: Yes, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is such a long book that they’ve actually split it into two, and it will be a pair of movies that brings the story of Harry Potter completely to an end.

Completely?
Watson: I think so. I’ve talked a lot to Jo Rowling, and I don’t think that she wants to take him any further, and that really will be that, after twelve years in all. Someone asked me the other day if there was any chance that I would return, if ever she changed her mind, and brought him back as a mature man in 20 years time, and I had to think long and hard about that idea. It really would depend on what I was doing in my life, what the circumstances were. So the answer, I think, has to be “Never say ‘never’”, but I think that it is highly unlikely, if you want the truth. I like to think that, by then, I would have moved on considerably.

You are off to University in the autumn.
Watson: I am—to Brown, which is an Ivy League establishment in the U.S.A. I’ve got a place there to read literature.

And was that also an equally deliberate choice, to step out of the limelight for a while?
Watson: It’s not so much that, no, I’m not trying to hide or anything like that. It sounds so geeky, but I really do like studying and reading, and if I’m not working on Harry Potter, then my greatest relaxation is to sit with a book. That’s how I escape stress—in literature. I always have several books on the go at any one moment, so it’s no good you asking “What’s on the bedside table at the moment, Emma?” because often I can’t even see the table! I think that all that reading is just about the only similarity I have with Hermione, if you ask me.

And studying will mean that a film career is put on the back burner for a while?
Watson: Not entirely, no, there are end of term breaks where I could do something if someone asks me, and I liked the idea. It all depends, doesn’t it? Acting and studying are in no way mutually exclusive, are they? Going there will mean a bit of “normality” for a while. It certainly doesn’t mean that I will never act again, that’s not true. There’s been a lot of confusion in the media about that, and most of it is ill informed—I seem to have managed pretty well up to this point! And also don’t forget that I’m also very interested in fashion, and in modeling, which I enjoy. I enjoy photo shoots, because there it seems that the cameramen (or camerawomen) look at me very differently.

You’ve come a long way in ten years. Have things changed much on the movie sets in that time?
Watson: Personally, yes, very much. You have to remember that I’d never acted on film before, and there I was at the age of ten, starring in a blockbuster. What I found so very helpful (and considerate) was that Chris Columbus, who directed the first Potter film, just turned the sound off on the set, and we dubbed our lines in later. That way, he could give us direct instructions on what to do, and where the special effects were to come in. Now that added a lot to his schedule, but it was so generous of him. Consequently, he got relaxed performances.

You’ve got very close to J.K. Rowling.
Watson: And to Helena Bonham Carter, as well. I look up to both of those women as mentors in their own fields. It’s nice to talk to—and to listen to—an older woman who has gone through what you’re going through, and to get their opinion. And it is always opinion. They never dish out big clunks of advice.