You were 12 years old when the first Harry Potter film came out. At what point did you realize the role was going to follow you for the rest of your life?
Daniel Radcliffe: It may have become clear to me only in the past few years. In your head, you imagine it will all go away once the series is over. When I was first going out to bars and pubs, I was trying to pretend I could have a normal existence. Then you realize that people know who you are, and when you’re in a bar they take out their camera phones. Eventually you accept that you have to adapt how you live.

The Potter series is over. Has the attention gone away?
It feels like I get recognized more now. Here’s what’s scary: If you were 14 when the first film came out, you’d now be almost in your 30s and could well have a child under 10 whom you’re now introducing to Harry Potter. We’re already getting the next generation. That’s just bizarre. It’s never going away.

Why hasn’t the appeal faded?
Because the stories are great! A huge part of our culture now is that if something becomes successful there’s a backlash. Harry Potter didn’t have that. There are people who don’t want to read it, but the number of people who actively dislike it is very low. The books are great, and they came along at the perfect moment, when there was a fear, because of the rise of computer games, that reading was going to become a thing of the past. When kids suddenly found these books, it was something everyone could get behind as a global populace.

You’ve said you were an “annoying, loud, inappropriate, messy drunk.” Can you tell us in what ways you were messy?
No, no, no. I’ve given way too much. It becomes painful to watch your personal issues that you’ve tried to be sincere about get turned into fodder for TV gossip shows. I was forthright about it, as you said, but once you start talking about this, that’s all you talk about. I can say lots of well-meaning stuff—why it happened and how I stopped—for three hours, and the headline would be DRUNK ON THE SET OF HARRY POTTER. So I don’t talk about it as much now.

You’ve said that your performance in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth movie in the series, was your best, but you hate watching yourself in the sixth, The Half-Blood Prince. How did your best and worst performances come back-to-back?
In every movie up to the sixth one, you can see a big step forward in my acting. And then it stopped, or went backward maybe, in the sixth film. I really enjoyed my performance in the fifth—part of it was how much I worked with people like Gary Oldman and David Thewlis. On the sixth, I remember watching it and thinking, Wow, there’s been no growth. You’re watching a mistake you made every day for 11 months—that’s the way I saw it. I had the idea that Harry was like a soldier traumatized by war, and as a result of that, he shuts down emotionally. That’s not a bad idea, but it’s not the most interesting thing to watch for two and a half hours.

You’ve focused mainly on low-budget independent films since playing Potter. Will people ever not think of you as Harry?
One of the positive by-products of celebrity culture for actors like me who’ve been stuck with one character for a long time is the opportunity for people to get to know me. I don’t think Mark Hamill, for example, had the same opportunities for people to get to know him. When I went on Jimmy Fallon and rapped a Blackalicious song, I got a job off that—playing Sam Houser in Game Changer, the movie about Grand Theft Auto. It made the guy in charge go, “Oh, he’s interested in hip-hop. He’s not just a typical posh white boy.”

You’re 26, which means you’ve been famous for more than half your life. Do strangers feel they’ve known you since childhood?
Getting recognized on the street teaches you that most people are polite and nice and just want a quick picture. Then you get an occasional *******. Normally they’re drunk. The *******s want a picture as well, but they want to be an ******* as they take the picture with you. They’ll start off, “Just so you know, I never really liked the Harry Potter movies.” Thanks, dickhead; that’s 10 ****ing years of my life. One time, a girl came up to me and said, “Could I have a picture?” I said, “Yeah, sure, if you want to.” And she goes, “Well, I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to.” What the ****? [laughs] And of course, me being me, I’m just like, “Sorry, that’s silly of me.” Then she walks off and Erin says to me, “That girl was a dick to you. You don’t have to be nice if someone’s rude.” But I’m better at saying no than [Potter co-star] Rupert Grint. He ended up going back to a fan’s house because he couldn’t say no to anything they asked. That’s when it’s gone too far.