Why Harry Potter Star Daniel Radcliffe Almost Quit The Harry Potter Movies

After eight successful movies, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Daniel Radcliffe in the role of the most famous wizard in the world. But did you know that he almost quit Harry Potter midway through the series?

That’s the small bombshell the now-24-year-old actor dropped when he revealed to The Guardian that he almost stopped playing the famous boy wizard after the third film in the movie franchise, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Radcliffe said:
"By the third film, I thought, if there's a time to get out, it's now; there's still enough time for another actor to come in and establish himself.
"For a while I thought, if I do all of them, will I be able to move on to other stuff or should I start doing other stuff now?"
At the time, Radcliffe was 14 years old, and said that he would have missed appearing alongside his fellow cast members, adding that "actually there aren't many great parts out there for teenage boys, certainly not as good as Harry Potter."

But Radcliffe has also learned to embrace the fact that the character of “the boy who lived” was going to be linked with him forever:

"I know that Potter is going to be with me for the rest of my life, so to try to set a goal where nobody talks about that anymore is stupid.
"It would be like… Paul McCartney might have gone on to do a lot of other things, but people are always going to want to talk about the Beatles."
"It's just a fact of your life, so you can't get annoyed by it or resent it. You have to embrace the fact that you were involved in this incredibly cool thing that did wonders for the British film industry and though you might not always be happy with the work you did on it, the opportunity it has given you to forge a career for yourself is amazing."
Are you relieved that Daniel Radcliffe stuck around for the entirety of the Harry Potter series? Do you think his quitting mid-series would have had an impact on the franchise?

(via Digital Spy, Blastr)