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WATFORD, England - Most movie sets are flimsy facades - the walls usually move when you lean against them - but not the airplane factory that a decade ago was transformed into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and built to last. The floors and walls are real stone, and no one knows their cracks and echoes better than Daniel Radcliffe.
Well, maybe that's not entirely true. "I still get turned around in here," Radcliffe said as he wandered through an especially dim corridor. "I couldn't tell you the name of this set, but I know my way to all the sets. Well, pretty much."
Radcliffe was wearing a black suit with a shirt and tie the color of a dark red wine, his costume for a holiday party scene in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which opens Wednesday. In person, he has a quick smile and the same chipper enthusiasm as his world-famous character, but the actor also possesses a sly wit and calculating eye that quickly set him apart from the puppyish boy wizard he plays.
Radcliffe, who turns 20 this month, has been wearing the Hogwarts robes since summer 2000, when Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling signed off on his casting.
In the subsequent years, Radcliffe has been called the world's richest working teen (he made $25 million just last year, according to Forbes, and also inked a $43 million deal for two more Potter films), and at age 16 he became the youngest nonroyal to have an individual portrait put on display at Britain's 153-year-old National Portrait Gallery.
"I started this when I was about 10 or 11; it's quite mad if you think about it," Radcliffe said with a serene expression that suggested he is accustomed to the bedlam. The eighth and last Potter film is scheduled to be released in 2011 and will close out one of the most massive undertakings in mainstream film history.
No one would begrudge Radcliffe for taking a long break afterward, but no one who knows him actually expects that to happen. The actor performed to strong reviews in London and New York in Peter Shaffer's play Equus, and the harrowing spiritual and sexual themes (along with the nude scenes for the star) were an emphatic declaration that Radcliffe wants to be more than Rowling's magical orphan.
"He's an extremely focused young man and keen to learn as much as he can at all times," Half-Blood director David Yates said. "He's pursuing a career that will carry him far beyond this role and these films. I have seen very few people his age with such purpose in them."
Radcliffe said the Potter soundstage had been a second home and a one-of-a-kind acting academy. Several generations of actors passed through the franchise, such as Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, and the late Richard Harris.
