“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” features a scene where Radcliffe faces extreme danger alongside Michael Gambon’s Albus Dumbledore, where he performed an underwater stunt all on his own. During the sequence, Harry encounters The Inferi, a group of corpse-like creatures, and he’s dragged underwater by them. Eventually, Dumbledore saves Harry’s life with a spell that creates a ring of fire and destroys the creatures, and Harry swims to the surface.
Radcliffe was holding himself underwater with a rope when the crew lit a ring of fire around him. It was all very real and intense, as Radcliffe explained:
“One shot, on the sixth film I think, where I’d start off underneath the water, and I was on a wire, so I was holding myself by a rope under the surface of the water, and then on ‘action’ I let go and they pulled me on the wire. So I flew out of the water, and there was a ring of fire around me, so I was just bursting out of the surface of the water through a ring of fire. It’s phenomenal they allowed me to do that myself, and again, I’ll probably never be on a job where they let me do that kind of stuff.”
Radcliffe commended the franchise’s directors — Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Newell, and David Yates — for stepping in when they did. The actor was grateful to explore every new phase of his acting career with them, and it prepared him for the eclectic career that would follow in the years after the “Harry Potter” franchise.
