Ever since the Harry Potter series ended, Daniel Radcliffe has gone on to deliver a string of surprising and daring performances – from his infamous farting corpse role in Swiss Army Man, to a guy with pistols nailed to his hands in Guns Akimbo. But for all the variety of his on-screen roles (soon to be seen as a sharply-dressed villain in The Lost City), Radcliffe hopes to mix things up further in the not-too-distant future, and to move behind the camera to direct. During his Desert Island Discs interview, the actor declared his intent to become a filmmaker – and now, he’s written the screenplay that he hopes will be his first film as director.
“I’ve got an idea for something that I have written,” he told the Empire Podcast. “I’m hopefully going to direct. It will be in a couple of years’ time, because the next 18 months at least are pretty much accounted for already.” While the genre and synopsis are under wraps for now, Radcliffe did reveal that it’s set in the world he’s been a part of for the last 20-plus years of his life. “People always say, ‘Write what you know’. I’ve had a very unrelatable life, so I don’t want to write that,” he laughs. “But I have found a way of writing something that is kind of connected to the film industry, about that.”
When the time does come to shoot the film, Radcliffe stated that he won’t be looking to act in it as well, instead concentrating on his role as director. “I would like to just direct, for two reasons – partly because I’ve never done it before, and I wouldn’t want to be thinking about both those things at the same time,” he explains. “But more practically, because when you direct a film, you have to watch that film a thousand times afterwards in the edit, and no part of me wants to watch my face that much. I’ll skip that.”
Listen to the full Daniel Radcliffe interview – talking The Lost City, the Harry Potter reunion special, the making of The Chamber Of Secrets, and much more – on the latest episode of the Empire Podcast. The Lost City comes to UK cinemas from 15 April.