DR: I’m very, very well. I’ve just finished Potter properly yesterday.

OLJ: Did they let you keep the glasses?

DR: Yes! I’ve got two pairs from the seventh film and the pair I wore in the very, very first movie -- which are really tiny on my head now!

OLJ: So I wanted to clear up a couple of rumors, if we may. You are not actually Harry Potter, right?

DR: No, not really.

OLJ: And I’m not the transsexual incarnation of Narcissa Malfoy, right?

DR: [Laughs] No, you are not. I can confirm that neither of those things are true.

OLJ: [Laughs] OK, OK. Good. It’s funny because with that little tabloid thing that happened a year ago with us, I actually got all these strange e-mails to my website asking “What is Harry Potter like?” And I just thought, I have no idea, actually.

DR: It’s strange. I think it’s a mixture of people who actually do, in some way, think I am Harry Potter and a number of people who can’t be bothered to know my name, which is fair enough.

I mean, when you’ve been so identified with one character for so long, it’s natural that it should almost become an alias. But I’ve been encouraged lately to find that people are using my real name more often.

OLJ: You’re coming to New York for your second Broadway show, this time a musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. What is it that you love so much about New York?

DR: I love the city as a whole, absolutely, but I love Broadway. And the community on Broadway is something that you hear talked about and talked about by other English actors who’ve been over there. And you think, Well, OK. How could it be that different or that much better? Because they make it sound amazing. And then you come to New York, and you actually experience [Broadway], and it is like nothing else.

We were across the road from Gypsy when we did Equus, and we were constantly hanging out with them after the show, and it was fantastic. And we went and met with the cast from The Seagull and Black Watch a couple of times. It’s very, very hard to actually describe why New York is so brilliant. But the community is amazing, and if you get involved with all those events, and you show how much you love and appreciate being there, you really get nothing but generosity and kindness back.

OLJ: Speaking of which, it’s pretty impressive that you were shooting two films over an entire year and trained for Broadway at the same time. How did you handle that?

DR: Training for Broadway is an ongoing process. I’ve been doing dance lessons for about a year and a half, at this point, and singing for two and a half years. But the singing lessons actually stemmed from having to sing the Milky Bar [candy ad] theme tune at the very beginning of Equus.

For some reason, I kept inventing a new tune every night. So they sent me off to this guy, Mark Meylan, who, among other people, taught Alan Rickman [Harry Potter’s Professor Snape] to sing. To use Alan’s words, “Mark Meylan teaches through sarcasm.” He sort of just abuses you as you get it right. He’s also just a lovely, kind, and brilliant man.

OLJ: What is it like to go on dates as Daniel Radcliffe?
DR: It’s quite nerve-racking because it’s not something I’m used to. Not that I struggle with talking, but I have this incredible anxiety about awkward silences and pauses and all that stuff, which I think everybody worries about. But I get quite wound up about that beforehand. I do actually manage to get quite chatty in the end -- probably too much -- and probably a bit boring. I just try to make girls laugh. That’s really the only thing I’m particularly good at on dates.