Daniel Radcliffe On Turning To Booze Over Fame Pressure

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has said that he turned to drinking because he was struggling with his new-found celebrity status.

In an interview with Sky Arts, the 24-year-old former child star, who is now teetotal, said: “I would have benefited from not drinking. It was not making me as happy as I wanted it to.

“It is not a real pressure but it is a pressure of living with the thought, ‘Oh, what if all these people are saying I am not going to have a career? What if they are all going to be right and will be laughing and I will be consigned to a bunch of ‘Where are they now?’ lists?”

Radcliffe has previously discussed his issues with booze, having quit in 2010, saying that though he never drank while working, he would often turn up to the set still drunk from the night before.

He told ShortList magazine in 2012: “The drinking was unhealthy and damaging to my body and my social life. That’s beyond question.

“I was living in constant fear of who I’d meet, what I might have said to them, what I might have done with them, so I’d stay in my apartment for days and drink alone.

“I was a recluse at 20. It was pathetic — it wasn’t me. I’m a fun, polite person and it turned me into a rude bore.”

He added that it was advice from Gary Oldman, his Harry Potter co-star who had battled alcoholism in the 90s, which persuaded him to stop drinking.

 “I didn’t say I had a problem — because I didn’t think I did at that point — but I told him I shared that mentality he had for actively seeking out chaos,” he said.

“He just said ‘You can’t keep doing this. You’ve got too much to lose’.

“And that really went in. But not even he could have stopped me alone — I had to stop myself. And stopping has shown me a world of happiness that I didn’t think was possible.”