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Daniel Radcliffe (WARWICK SAINT)

Not being contractually obligated to yet another sequel is something Daniel Radcliffe finds quite agreeable.
   
"Someone can call me up with an offer and I don’t have to ask, ‘Can you push it back a year until I’m done shooting the next Potter movie?’" Radcliffe sighs. The 22-year-old actor, of course, landed the role of a lifetime at age 11 when cast as author J.K. Rowling’s massively popular boy wizard in the screen adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001).
   
Eleven years and eight series installments later, however, Radcliffe thankfully no longer has life planned three years in advance around the series’ production schedule. He’s veritably revelling in his newfound freedom — personally and professionally.
   
"That’s the best way I’ve heard it put, actually," Radcliffe laughs. Nonetheless, his days on the set of the latest Potter film behind him, his existence is not without newly revealed pressures.
   
"It’s a slightly bizarre time," Radcliffe says of the first year away from the franchise juggernaut that had almost become an industry unto itself. In a recent conversation with co-star Tom Felton — who played Potter’s nemesis Draco Malfoy in the series — Radcliffe says the two discussed how "it feels like the last 10 years didn’t happen. It’s like we’re all starting from scratch.
   
"It’s not that I’m missing it, but things also feel slightly daunting now, looking a head."
   
Radcliffe’s first post-Potter starring role is in the new Hammer Films ghost story The Woman in Black, opening Friday. The difference now for the actor is that such projects are no longer merely "breaks" — there’s far more pressure for them to be successful in their own rights.
   
"It does feel like a bit of a safety net has been cut away," Radcliffe agrees.
   
That’s not to say he’s without goals, however.
   
"I do want to distinguish myself, for certain. I’m not so strategic in my thinking that way and choice of roles now, but I do want to do different kinds of work."
   
Radcliffe says the script of The Woman in Black reeled him in.
   
"It was so frightening, just on the page," he enthuses. (For that matter, the role also offered a chance to be part of the resurgence of the "legend" that is the British-based Hammer Films — a legend Radcliffe had always been aware of while growing up in the British film industry, his mother having been a casting agent.)
   
Acting in The Woman in Black demanded new and different skills. "There’s a lot of non-verbal scenes," Radcliffe explains, recalling director James Watkins’ on-set insistence that "‘there’s nothing wrong with silence.’
   
"I’ve been far more used to having dialogue to work with, so not having anything to say much of the time was a challenge."
   
For that matter, Radcliffe’s character in The Woman in Black — a London lawyer named Arthur Kipps — is written as years older than the actor himself. After Kipps’ wife dies in childbirth, the widower travels to a remote village to settle legalities after a wealthy woman’s death; it is there, at a stark manor house that threatens to sink into the sea, that he comes face to face with the spectral figure of the title.
   
If Radcliffe found the role a chance to stretch his acting limbs, he seemingly has no intention of stopping there: his next role is none other than that of legendary American beat poet Allen Ginsberg in the upcoming film Kill Your Darlings —the making of which will be the actor’s first time shooting in the U.S.
   
Certainly Radcliffe expresses a desire to improve at his craft.
   
"I’ve never had a real process before as an actor," he confesses. "I’ve just gone on instinct. That’s something I’d like to change at this point — I’d like to bring more technique to bear, and expand my toolbox."
   
As for what influences his choice of roles, "it’s about what roles interest me. Or whether it’s a film I think I might like to see.
   
"I don’t have any famous roles in mind I’d like to take on. Many young actors would probably say Hamlet, but that seems terrifying to me."
   
It’s less a question of whom Radcliffe would like to play, perhaps, than whom he’d like to play with.
   
"The list of people I’d like to work with is endless," he says. To take one example, he declares the writing, producing and directing team of the Coen Brothers (Fargo, No Country for Old Men) to be "heroes."
   
Radcliffe remains well aware of the ever-present Potter shadow. One thinks of former studio mogul David O. Selznick, who famously feared his obituary would identify him as "producer of Gone with the Wind."
   
"I’m very accepting of the fact that people may always associate me with that role," Radcliffe says.
   
That said, it’s not going to determine what he chooses to do with his now wide-open career. And as for what role may be next, he has a simple barometer.
   
"I’ll know it when I read it."
   
The Woman in Black opens Feb. 3.