Daniel Radcliffe has skilfully mastered the transition from Hogwarts boy hero to leading man status (on film and Broadway)— but his girlfriend has torn him off a strip for not being better around the house.
The star told me he has been given a two-year deadline to get his domestic act together.
Daniel, who opens in February in the sublime Gothic psychological thriller The Woman In Black, spelled out to me what Rosie Coker, his girlfriend, told him.
‘She says I have a deadline of two years to be like a fully-functioning human being around the house,’ he told me.
I asked him what, exactly, that entailed. ‘I think it means I have to be able to cook for myself better than I can at the moment, and it means I can’t leave the house in a state the way I do.
‘I didn’t promise her anything, but I have made it my mission to improve myself. There’s certainly progress to be made,’ he joked, after admitting that his talent as an actor far outweighed his ability to function in the kitchen.
He said a low point came when he was back in London a while ago and wolfed down half a bowl of cereal before rushing off to catch an early flight.
A week later, the bowl and the cereal were still there: congealed into a rock-solid mess. ‘I tried to change after that, but it has been a slow process,’ he says.
Rosie has just finished working as a production assistant on Snow White And The Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron. She arrived in New York on Sunday.
I asked whether Daniel had hired someone to clean his apartment for her arrival. He blushed and made a startling confession. ‘My mum’s here and she came round and tidied everything up for me.’
‘When you find somebody as cool and as tolerant as my girlfriend then the clear policy is to cling on to them for dear life’
Seeing my incredulous expression, he explained he had a good excuse: two performances on Saturday of his hit musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying — plus a Sunday matinee.
On those points he’s forgiven because the show, directed by Rob Ashford, is like running a marathon every day.
Daniel and Rosie met on the Harry Potter set and have been close for more than a year, though she has had to fly in to see him during his ten months on Broadway.
‘She’s busy, I’m busy, but we’re making it work and it’s good. She’s helped me grow up and I love her very much.
‘When you find somebody as cool and as tolerant as my girlfriend then the clear policy is to cling on to them for dear life,’ Daniel told me as we sat in a diner not far from his apartment.
Daniel and Rosie, both 22, also worked on The Woman In Black together. The film is based on the ghostly thriller written by Susan Hill.
As directed by James Watkins it’s an elegant homage to the old Hammer films. Indeed, it’s being released under the Hammer banner: the first time that’s happened in more than 20 years.
The stage play it’s based on is still running in the West End. Daniel plays lawyer Arthur Kipps, who is sent to settle the estate of a deceased client who lived in a remote mansion, accessible only by a causeway.
Things go bump in the night, children die mysteriously and ghostly figures pop up to scare the bejesus out of you.
Though the picture also features Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer, it really hangs on Daniel’s shoulders — and he more than holds it up.
There’s 20 minutes in the middle where he’s on his own in the creaky old house and has to react to increasingly creepy goings-on.
He gives a remarkable performance — confirming the early promise evident when he did Equus in the West End and on Broadway, and the later Potter pictures.
Daniel says he’s amazed he had ‘the cojones’ to do Equus (where he famously stripped off on stage), but he feels the play helped define him as an actor prepared to take serious risks.
He finishes in How To Succeed In Business on January 1. He’ll then do five weeks of promotion on The Woman In Black, have three weeks off and then prepare for the edgy independent movie Kill Your Darlings, in which he will portray beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
He also has a comedy lined up for further down the road — and a third project is being developed. After all that time playing Harry Potter he doesn’t want to repeat himself again and his non-Potter choices all have an edgy sensibility.
You have to remember that he has worked with top-flight directors and actors. Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Imogen Stubbs, Emma Thompson and Richard Griffiths became important influences.
It’s clear to me that Daniel has graduated to the grown-up ranks with honours.
He may have many millions in the bank, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to work hard. Now he just needs to learn how to do the washing up.
Ralph Fiennes has chosen fast-rising actress Felicity Jones to portray Charles Dickens’s mistress, Nelly Ternan, in a film about their secret affair.
Felicity, who was named Breakthrough Actor of the Year by judges at the Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York, is expected to start work on the picture in spring or summer of next year.
First, though, she’s set to work with Warren Beatty in a film about a young woman who had a romance with Howard Hughes towards the end of his life.
The Dickens movie is called The Invisible Woman and is based on Claire Tomalin’s detailed examination of the relationship between the author and Nelly, which lasted 13 years until the day of his death.
The project has long been developed by producers Stewart Mackinnon and Gaby Tana with BBC Films.
Ms Tana worked with Fiennes on The Duchess and his gripping directorial debut Coriolanus, which opens early in the New Year.
Fiennes is as natural behind the camera as he is in front of it — and he knows how to elicit first-class performances from his cast.
Not that Felicity needs lessons. She had everybody chasing after her at the Sundance Film Festival back in January once they saw her performance in Drake Doremus’s film Like Crazy, playing a British student who begins a complicated romance with a fellow student.
Plus, she was utterly charming in the romantic comedy Chalet Girl (which is out on DVD and Blu-ray). And as if that wasn’t enough, Michael Grandage has directed her twice in major roles at the Donmar.
The actress, who used to provide the voice of Emma on The Archers, has a stylish vibe about her.
She looked cool in a mint green cocktail dress, created for her by New York designers Proenza Schouler, and cream Calvin Klein high heels.
She beckoned me to a corner and said ‘Look at this! as she showed off the dress’s tiger-print inlay.
Are you a tigress, I wondered. ‘No, I’m a pussycat,’ she smiled.
Let’s leave it there.
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I had a couple of hours to kill so I snuck into a cinema on 42nd Street — the only film that fitted into my schedule was The Muppets movie.
It’s so utterly charming that it was my guilty pleasure of the year. Kermit, with help from humans Jason Segel and Amy Adams, has to round up the old gang — including Miss Piggy, who’s got a great gig in Paris editing Vogue for the less than petite woman — so they can put on a show to save their old theatre. Ridiculous, but bliss.
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Charlize Theron doesn’t mess around. She flew into New York to collect a prize from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and headed straight to the airport so she could arrive in London ahead of Wednesday’s big strike.
‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a queue at Heathrow, so I’m getting out of town in a hurry,’ she told me.
Charlize is in the best actress race for her performance in Jason Reitman’s cracking black comedy Young Adult.
I Wonder how Tony Blair would have coped had Hugh Jackman pulled him up on stage and made him swivel his hips?
The former prime minister attended a matinee performance of Jackman’s hot ticket Back On Broadway show on Wednesday.
Jackman usually drags one or two members of the audience on stage and does a dance routine with them. I saw this happen when I caught the show in Toronto and it’s hilarious.
I caught it again in New York, on Wednesday night, and heard about the VIP visitor. Jackman had told that afternoon’s audience that Mr Blair was in the house.
There was a ripple of excitement because Americans revere the former PM.
Jackman shouted out that he voted for Blair while he was working in London doing Oklahoma! at the National, and Blair grinned. (As an Australian, Jackman could vote in a British General Election while living in the UK.)
The actor is having the time of his life at the Broadhurst Theatre, where he does some terrific song-and-dance numbers and engages everyone in the packed theatre.
Along with producer Robert Fox, Jackman is talking with Cameron Mackintosh about using one of his theatres for a series of Sunday night concerts while he’s in London filming the musical Les Miserables for Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper.
Dates and a theatre will be set once the Les Miz shooting schedule has been sorted.
Hugh Dancy, who stars with Nina Arianda — a brilliant newcomer — in a play by David Ives called Venus In Fur.
On at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, it features an actress who arrives for an audition with a bagful of tricks including a whip and a pair of black patent leather, thigh-length boots.
Dancy plays a playwright and director, and Ms Arianda is the woman in black (dominatrix gear).
It’s completely fascinating and the actors are excellent. It makes you question how and why women are treated as objects of desire in our culture.
Dancy can also be seen soon in the Sundance sensation Martha Marcy May Marlene.
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Gary Oldman, who told me he will play John Le Carre’s George Smiley in a film version of Smiley’s People.
‘It’s happening some time next year,’ the actor said after he collected a tribute honour at the Gotham Independent Film Awards in Wall Street.
Oldman is a possible Oscar contender for his sublime portrait of Smiley in this year’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Smiley’s People is set several years later and the former spymaster unravels an ingenious secret.
Tomas Alfredson will direct.
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Mark Rylance will play Richard III in a production that marks his return to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
He will perform that role in repertory with Twelfth Night in which, as I revealed in the summer, he will play Olivia — a part he first essayed several years ago.
Tim Carroll will direct Rylance in both plays at the Globe in what are known as original practice productions — meaning they will be performed and staged by an all-male ensemble as in the Bard’s day.
When we last spoke, Rylance told me he hoped to transfer the productions into the West End and then tour the U.S., working with regular collaborator Sonia Friedman — though nothing has been confirmed yet. Richard III will run from July 14, and Twelfth Night from September 22.
Rylance has spent the past couple of seasons starring in the smash hit Jerusalem in London and on Broadway.
The Shakespeare’s Globe’s 2012 season begins on June 7 with Henry V, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, with Jamie Parker as the young warrior king. Rylance was the Globe’s first artistic director.
He served in the position for ten years until leaving in 2005.
