“Harry Potter” star, Daniel Radcliffe, confessed to The Off Camera Show that the pressures of starring in the multi-million dollar blockbuster franchise took a toll on him.
The levels of fame and attention that was thrust on him as a child was too much to bear and by his late teenage years, he turned to alcohol to cope.
“There is an awareness that I really struggled with particularly in my late teens when I was going out to places for the first time where you would feel…again it could have largely been in my head but…you would feel watched when you went into a bar, when you went into a pub,” Radcliffe explained.
He resorted to drinking, stating “In my case, the quickest way of forgetting about the fact that you were being watched was to get very drunk and then as you get very drunk, you become aware that, oh people are watching more now because now I’m getting very drunk, so I should probably drink more to ignore that more.”
As the actor elaborated, he explained the difficulties in facing normal emotions as a young star, coming of age in the Hollywood lifestyle.
Radcliffe admitted to feeling like he had to live up to an image of how he thought he should be, “I think there was some part of me that was like actors have to be like crazy, cool drunks.”
Very fortunately for him, he figured out a way to escape his bad habit with help from his friends and family.
After one too many nights of hard partying, he woke up and made the decision to stop.
Even with all of the pressures he faced, Radcliffe says he was always extremely grateful for the opportunity to play Harry Potter.
“There was never a point where I was like ‘I wished this didn’t happen to me. I wish I wasn’t Harry Potter,’ like that just didn’t happen.”
