Daniel Radcliffe portrayed The Boy Who Lived at 11 and offered ambitious, dramatic performances in all eight Harry Potter films. And even though the actor has a long list of movies with many quirky, odd roles to ensure he isn’t only known as the young wizard, Harry Potter has been his career-defining role.
Radcliffe has always said working on the Harry Potter films was a blast. The actor recently said he got to do some of the most thrilling stunts of his career shooting the franchise films. And while there was a lot of CGI and hard-to-pronounce spells in the Harry Potter movies, shooting the extensive underwater scenes in Goblet of Fire and Half-Blood Prince may have been the biggest challenge.
Radcliffe’s role in the Harry Potter movies gave him some of the most memorable experiences of his career
The budgets for the Harry Potter movies were through the roof, and since magic is central to the plot, the crew at Leavesden spent a fortune on building sets that were larger than life. Radcliffe interviewed with GQ, breaking down his most iconic characters, and said playing Harry Potter gave him access to some of the most memorable moments of his career.
He also discussed how the role gave him the chance to perform in sequences that most actors never get to do, stating, “It was really cool. I’ve heard that we averaged seven seconds of footage a day or something of usable footage. It was one of those moments that you look back on, and you go, ‘God, that’s special.’”
Daniel Radcliffe logged how much time he spent underwater when filming ‘Goblet of Fire’
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The Digital Fix, Radcliffe needed to spend six months learning how to scuba dive, starting in shallow water and working up to deeper waters.
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Radcliffe’s character takes part in the Triwizard Tournament, a competition between schools where students put their wizardry to the test through a series of increasingly dangerous challenges. For the six weeks they spent filming in the set that doubled as an underwater tank, Radcliffe kept a logbook to track his time there.
The actor gushed about his time on set, saying, “There is so much on Potter that was so intense and so crazy. You don’t even think about it at the time … I had, like, a log book of all the hours that I’d done underwater. It was really cool.” Although he didn’t give a specific number of hours, the fact that he logged them in the first place demonstrates how intense it was.
‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ wasn’t the only film in which Daniel Radcliffe was underwater
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire wasn’t the only film in which Radcliffe was underwater. Radcliffe and Michael Gambon, who played Albus Dumbledore, face grave peril in one scene of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Harry is attacked by corpse-like creatures known as The Inferi and dragged underwater. A spell cast by Dumbledore eventually destroys the creatures, and Harry is able to swim to the surface.
In the interview with GQ, Radcliffe explained how the effect shown in the sequence was made, revealing that the crew created a ring of fire around him while he was underwater, suspended from a wire.
Radcliffe applauded the timely interventions of the franchise’s filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón, Chris Columbus, David Yates, and Mike Newell. The actor appreciated the opportunity to try out his acting chops with them, and he believes that their support helped pave the way for his varied career after the Harry Potter films.
There’s no doubt that Radcliffe enjoyed himself immensely while filming the intricate scenes he was required to complete for the Harry Potter films and that Potterheads are grateful for his hard work.
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