Daniel Radcliffe talks Horns, Harry Potter and impersonating Elijah Wood

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

This Friday will see the release of Alexandre Aja's (PIRANHA 3D, HIGH TENSION) HORNS, starring the boy who lived Daniel Radcliffe. Based on the book written by Joe Hill (son of the infamous Stephen King), the story focuses on the aftermath of woman's mysterious death, and her accused boyfriend who finds himself growing horns that seem to have some strange effects on those in close proximity. Radcliffe recently took to the front page of the internet to talk about HORNS, as well as talking up some Harry Potter jokes and embracing the fact that people still confuse him for Elijah Wood. You can check out the whole AMA here but I've included some highlights below.

Regarding how close the HORNS film is to the book:

I think it stays very true to the book. Of course some things have to change, but to me, what makes the book remarkable is the mixing of the romantic elements, the comic elements, and the, sort of, horror and fantasy stuff, and what we have absolutely done in the film is captured all those tones and they compliment each other beautifully as they do in the book. So that would be the biggest success of the movie's adaptation.

On the process of having his prosthetics for HORNS applied:

Um, we listened to heavy metal, basically. That was it. Yeah! And because the two guys that were doing the makeup, Mike McCarthy and Mike Fields, they were both big metal heads, and I mean, the actual process -they made it so easy – the horns themselves only took about 20 minutes to put on, and even some of the more extreme makeup that we had near the end only took a couple of hours, so you know, I had it easier than a lot of actors do. And yeah, so Metallica, Megadeth, and what was the other band we listened to loads of… shit… can't remember it'll come back to me.

His acting approach to HORNS:

Well, because of the nature of the Horns mean that people confess their deepest, darkest stuff to him, and do crazy things around him all the time, it sort of means that the challenge as an actor is doing justice to the insanity of the situation that you're in, and reacting appropriately to the craziness, but also keeping it grounded and real and truthful, because you can't just have, you know, 2 hours of people freaking out, that's not interesting to watch. So yeah, the challenge was finding the balance between the craziness of the story, and the very real tone that we wanted to get for the film.

Regarding whether or not he should just do a movie with Elijah Wood:

YES! Just write that movie! And absolutely! Let's do this! Or could there be a film where one of us, is like, an impersonator of the other? We've got to eke out some mileage out of this mistaken identity!

On the best prank pulled on the Harry Potter set:

God… I should probably about the one that was pulled on ME, rather than any I pulled. Because it came from a very unexpected place. There's – in the 3rd film – there's a shot in the great hall of all the kids sleeping in the great hall, and the camera starts very very wide, and comes in so that it's an inch from my face, a very long developing set, yeah, and Alan Rickman decided he would plant one of those fart machines in my, uh, sleeping bag, and they waited until like -the camera had come in for this huge DRAMATIC developing shot, and then unleashed this tremendous noise in the great hall. I immediately thought: "This is one of the other kids f*cking around, and we were going to get in trouble." But as it turns out, it was one of the members of Britain's acting royalty. I think I laughed a lot, was probably a bit embarrassed, but it was really really funny (check out the scene here).

While Radcliffe will always been known as Harry Potter, the two things that really impress me about the man is the fact that he absolutely embraces it, as well as the fact that he's actually really good in the other projects he's taken on. Time will tell if he's able to keep up the momentum but he certainly doesn't show any signs of being a Daniel Boringcliffe.

HORNS will hit theaters on October 31.