Katie Couric: You recently completed a PSA for the Trevor Project. Why did you do that? Why is this cause so important to you?
Dan Radcliffe: It was something that was introduced to me by some friends of ours in New York and I just thought it was a fantastic cause. The fact that it existed just impressed me in the first place. The fact that people were volunteering to work in the call center, which I then went to visit. I went and visited the call center and that, for me, was one of the most amazing afternoons I’ve ever spent in the city because you are seeing these people who do it out of absolute compassion and empathy.

It’s something that, growing up, I became aware of a few years ago I was always quite passionate about gay rights because I grew up around a lot of gay men because my mum and dad were friends with a lot of gay guys. Suddenly I was at school and people were using derogatory, homophobic terms and, for the first time, I was going, “Hmmph, okay, so wait … being gay isn’t cool with everyone? Some people have a problem with that?”

The idea that somebody would be victimized because of it is so horrendous. The fact that I’m in a position to have a voice that’s heard on something like that, or at least draw attention to that – I feel very fortunate to be able to do something, to be able to help something like the Trevor Project out. It’s an amazing foundation. So it’s something that I’m incredibly proud to be involved with. If I do nothing else, I’m proud to be involved with that.

Dan Radcliffe: I cried. I wept like a child on the day we finished filming. I was distraught because it is like a family. It has been like a family. It’s scary to have to go out into the real world. It’s like you’re leaving the nest, but at the same time, we always knew it was going to end. We can’t just go on indefinitely filming Harry Potter films.

Katie Couric: You could be a middle-aged Harry Potter, Daniel.
Dan Radcliffe: I couldn’t. I don’t think I’d like that. I think I would go mad. I’ve loved every single second of Harry Potter. Everything that happens to me in the rest of my life, I owe to those films. But to now walk away from it is exciting in another way, because I feel it’s given me the grounding in a career that people could only ever wish for. To now be able to take off from there is what I want to do. I want to make the most of the opportunity I’ve been given.

"If you're going to read the good ones, you have to read the bad ones. And I certainly don't want to read the bad ones."

He also says he avoids Twitter: "I think Twitter is a really strange thing, because there are certain people in the world who are naturally epigrammatic, and can say things very concisely, and very brilliantly, in natural space and time. But I think they are a very small number of people."