During the Harry Potter film series, Daniel Radcliffe was our childhood hero. He brought the most popular young-adult book series to life as the title character and grew up engrossed in a stable lifestyle of magic and fame. Between the ages of 11 to 21, the film and Broadway star knew little else other than his on-screen persona as ‘The Chosen One.’ But when it came time for the films to end, Radcliffe was submerged into the ultimate quarter-life crisis: what to do with his life after Harry Potter? Most twentysomethings are faced with this anxious battle of self-discovery after college, but for Radcliffe, after essentially growing up as Harry, transitioning into his own life wasn’t easy.
Radcliffe revealed in an interview with Marc Maron’s “WTF Podcast” that he succumbed to getting black-out drunk almost every night while filming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in 2007; he added that he didn’t take control over his alcohol problems until 2010 when he quit drinking at the age of 21.
“There was definitely a time when I was coming out of ‘Potter’ and I was into the real world, suddenly I was in a world where I’m not going to have that consistency anymore. I’m not going to see all those people every year. I’m not going to have my friends around me all the time,” he said. “I was pretty inconsolable on the last day of ‘Potter.’ I was really worried. I was living alone, and I think I really freaked out. I drank a lot, as has been recorded.”
Radcliffe has managed to completely turn his life around personally and professionally. Diagnosed with mild dyspraxia, a developmental coordination disorder that interferes with motor skills, Radcliffe overcame his struggles by starring in two Broadway shows, Equus in 2007 and How to Suceed in Business Without Really Trying in 2011. Radcliffe also returned to Broadway in 2013 in the dark comedy The Cripple of Inishmaan. Recently, Radcliffe has been promoting his new film Victor Frankenstein and frequents coffeehouses and karaoke places (instead of bars) with friends and long-term girlfriend, actress Erin Darke.
Even though we aren’t happy to hear about his struggles, Radcliffe’s story is comforting to twentysomethings in the way that he reminds us that everyone has their demons to face and if we work hard, everything will turn out all right in the end.