Dead good

THEY make an unlikely couple – Daniel Radcliffe, the young man much of the world knows as Harry Potter, and veteran actor Michael Gambon. But sitting next to each other during interviews on the press junket for the latest piece of cinematic Pottering about, the pair spar verbally and seem to be having a good time, despite the mad hoopla surrounding each fresh episode of JK Rowling’s stories.

Radcliffe, who turns 20 this month, has been playing Harry half his life and must have spent more time working on a movie set than studying in a school classroom. Gambon took over as Professor Dumbledore, the head of Hogwarts School, after the death of Richard Harris and made the role his own.

The pair have always had a teacher and pupil relationship on screen, as Dumbledore coaches the “chosen one” in the art of wizardry, but they grow closer in this latest instalment that ends – and I’m giving away nothing because every Potter aficionado is aware of this – with the professor’s death.

“By the end of the film, the mantle has been passed from Dumbledore to Harry. He’s now the protector of the wizard world and the person charged with defeating Lord Voldemort,” explains director David Yates.

It’s a point on which Radcliffe elaborates. “It used to be the case that Harry’s relationship with Dumbledore was one of a teacher and student, but actually this time round it becomes very much a general and one of his foot soldiers – one of his lieutenants. It was a pleasure to play that with Michael,” he says.

To which Gambon adds: “I hand the lead over to Daniel’s character in that scene. I give it all over to you and you take the weight and the worry of it, as I’m falling apart.”

While most inquisitors ask younger cast members about learning from the older, more experienced actors, you wonder how Gambon feels being surrounded by youngsters. "It's great because I can learn a lot from them, their simplicity. And that’s meant as a compliment,” he explains.

“It’s not like my acting, which is usually right over the top, deeply complicated and mired in subtext. I just pick up my simplicity of thought from younger people.”

You’re never quite sure when Gambon’s being serious. He’s been known to tell fibs in interviews. Radcliffe, an expert at fending off difficult questions after years of doing so, can easily deal with posers such as “Which spell would you use if you had the choice?”

Invisibility would be good, he thinks, “because you could sneak up on people like Michael and give him heart attacks. That would be fun. That would be the one I’d probably go for, or if I could fly that would be awesome as well”.

Gambon has another suggestion. “You could tell me jokes while you’re invisible, and I wouldn’t have to laugh.”

Kissing is another subject on which Radcliffe’s regularly quizzed. I recall him being asked by a girl from Sugar magazine if he used his tongue on his first screen kiss. Since then he’s done full frontal nudity on stage in Equus, in London and New York, so a spot of lip-locking shouldn’t be a worry.

In The Half-Blood Prince, he gets romantic with Ginnie Weasley, played by Bonnie Wright.

“I think I speak for both of us when I say it was just another scene,” says Radcliffe, of snogging Ginnie.

“For you,” he continues, turning to Wright, “ it may have been more difficult because it was your first kiss on screen and obviously that can be very nerve-wracking.

“When Katie (Leung) came in to play Cho she was always coming in as a love interest, so I knew that was always the basis on which we were going to be working together. I’d grown up with Bonnie from the age of nine, so that’s quite strange in a way.”

Being a global movie star must be good for attracting the attention of girls. “If girls like me, then that’s fantastic. We’ll wait and see,” he says diplomatically.

“I go to Japan and they all scream and it all goes mad, and it happens all over the world.

But that’s a different type of me. That’s the me that’s on red carpets and stuff, and that’s who a lot of people seem to be attracted to, or fancy and stuff.

“But the me who sits in a darkened room in my socks and my underwear for eight hours watching cricket with a big bowl of pasta is not nearly as appealing to women.”

Equus showed him capable of taking risks, in line with his belief that the greatest quality an actor can have – and which some of the actors he most admires possess – is a fearlessness and willingness to try something even if they think they might fail.

Gambon seems a more relaxed performer, with a reputation as a giggler on the set, although he claims with a smile: “I’m very quiet, I never laugh.”

To which Radcliffe responds: “I’ve said in interviews before, Michael, that you’re the least professional actor I’ve ever worked with. And the most respected.”

Gambon has the last word: “I’m very proud of that.”

As for filming the death scene, it wasn’t emotional, just frightening, as he had to go over the edge of the top of a tower. But Radcliffe says in terms of actually seeing him dead, it was strange.

“You were upset,” says Gambon.

“That was acting, Michael. It was. You were on your best behaviour that night. All you had to do was lie there and be still,” explains Radcliffe.

“You did very well. I had to wake you up at one point. It was a great scene, but it was quite hard to do because, at that stage, never having been bereaved, no actor, however good they are, can hope to imagine what that’s like.

“So, if I’ve come somewhere close, that’s fantastic. But it was a difficult scene because I’ve simply never had any experience of that depth of emotion.”

It emerges that poetry-writing Radcliffe gave Gambon a book of his poetry as a present. “I’m quite cheap so I just gave him stuff I’d written. I couldn’t be bothered to get him something real,” says Radcliffe.

Gambon knows exactly what to do with it, “It’s very good, I’m going to flog it.”

■ Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (12A) opens in cinemas on Wednesday.