Every Brilliant Thing in Daniel Radcliffe’s Private World

And we’re not just talking about saying leviosa versus leviosaaa. “Somebody gave him a toy Lamborghini, and he has remembered it as zucchini,” Radcliffe explained on a March episode of the now-finished Late Show With Stephen Colbert, “which I will never correct because it’s brilliant.”

He also hasn’t given his son a hard time for not knowing his Potter prestige.   

“Does my son know who Harry Potter is? No, not yet,” Radcliffe told The New York Times in February. “Somebody gave me a DVD to sign recently, and so it was sitting on our kitchen table for a couple of days. And at one point, he was next to it, and I was just like, ‘Who’s that?’ I’d see if he’d recognize me on the cover and he didn’t, which was great.”

It’s not that Radcliffe is trying to wear an invisibility cloak when it comes to his past. It’s just that, “for as long as I can just be his dad and he won’t know me as anything else,” he noted, “I will maintain that for as long as I can.”

Radcliffe took on the role of dad when he and Darke welcomed their baby boy—whose name has yet to be revealed—in 2023. 

“It’s a crazy thing, but it’s also really beautiful,” he shared with E! News a few months after entering fatherhood. “Watching my girlfriend become a mum is really the most incredible, beautiful thing to be witness to.”

And together, they’ve discovered the miracles and challenges of parenthood.

“The short answer is it’s awesome, and he’s the best thing that’s ever happened,” the Miracle Workers star told E! News in October 2023. The long answer? “It’s frankly terrifying to have a human being in the world that I care this much about,” he added, “and that everything he does is going to affect how I feel about my life for the rest of my life. So, you know, that’s intimidating.”

What wasn’t intimidating was the way Radcliffe and Darke met on the set of their 2013 movie Kill Your Darlings.

“It was one of those instant things where you’re like, ‘Oh, I really like this person,’” he recalled to Parade in 2014. “You just have a connection with somebody, and then suddenly it’s incredibly easy to talk to them.”

The actors went on to form their own house—not as Gryffindors, but as a couple who finds happiness in the simplicities of life.

“Doing the most mundane stuff, like just going shopping, with her is just a joy,” Radcliffe told People Now in 2019. “It’s fun. I never thought I would find going to the supermarket a genuinely fun experience—and it sounds very sad, I’m sure, to all your viewers. But it’s the joy that that person can bring to the activities that, if they weren’t there, you could be doing the exact same thing and it would suck. But them being there just makes it awesome.”

Other things he finds awesome in his day-to-day? Exercising.

“I do weights, circuit training, cardio,” Radcliffe told The Wall Street Journal in March. “I don’t look like a person who would be a fitness freak, but I’m pretty intense about it. I feel like I’m a cliché of a former alcoholic or anyone who had any kind of addictive personality and then switched that addiction to being about the gym.”

He also noted he will “run on coffee all day” and is into sports.

“I’m a big Fantasy Football person,” the 36-year-old continued, “so Monday morning is normally consoling myself with how badly Sunday has gone.”

Otherwise, Radcliffe stays plenty busy with work. Although, he noted his schedule might change as his son grows.

“I had a conversation with an older actor about how hard it is to do theater once your kids are in real school because they’re gone all day, and that’s when you’re around,” The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins star told TIME in March. “And then they come home at night, and that’s when you’re not there. I assume there is going to be a point when he’s a teenager when he’s like, ‘I really don’t want to hang out with you, Dad,’ and I’ll go off to shoots. But right now he’s pretty into hanging out with me.”

But would Radcliffe encourage his son to pursue a career in acting one day?

“Not unless he really wants to,” he told E! News at the 2024 Tony Awards, where he won for his performance in Merrily We Roll Along. “I don’t want to stop him from doing that. But if you can do something other than acting, if you want to do something behind the scenes, it’s a lot more of a healthy life in a lot of ways. If he can act but not be famous, great, then I can encourage it.”

But before Radcliffe sends an owl about any future career decisions, read on to see more Harry Potter stars then and now.