Crush: Hollywood's Next Generation

• Daniel Radcliffe: 'Girls My Own Age Are Not an Option'

  posted by James Kaplan, Parade - Thu Jun 25 2009, 2:06 PM PDT

  Daniel Radcliffe poses on the cover of Sunday's Parade. Justin Stephens/Parade In this Sunday's issue of Parade, Daniel Radcliffe talks about breaking free of his "Harry Potter" image and finding love with older women. Check out the highlights below, and then read the full article on Parade.com.
  
  Love has an age: "Girls my own age are not really an option. I find, generally speaking, they have to be entertained more than older girls do. So most of the girls I have had serious things with are generally sort of in their 20s."
  
  See Exclusive Pics From Parade's Wild Shoot With Daniel Radcliffe
  
  On turning 20 next month: "I've noticed I make noises when I get up and sit down now. I mean, my knees are rotten bad -- I refused to wear knee pads too many times when I was doing stunts, and I just clobbered them up a bit. I am an old man in a young man's body."
  
  Where Harry leaves off and he begins: "When I started out at the age of 10 or 11, I was essentially saying the lines as I myself would say them. When I became aware that that's what I was doing, at 13 or 14, it didn't make sense to change, because it would suddenly be a dramatic shift in the character."
  
  See Photos of the 'Harry Potter' Star Through the Years
  
  Justin Stephens/Parade Shocking audiences with a nude love scene on Broadway: "As soon as we started doing the show, people went, 'Oh! So this is not pornography -- this is a play,' It was mainly hyped beforehand. I didn't set out to shock people. I set out to do something different from 'Potter.' If I had wanted to shock people I would have played, you know, a gay drug dealer."
  
  Stirring up a group of teenage theatergoers: "From the moment I walked onstage, I could hear them talking and getting very excited. Then they started talking to me: 'Dan! Dan! Look over here, Dan!' I'm not somebody who particularly gets angry about stuff like that. In my professional life, I rarely get angry at all. And yet, I came offstage seeing blood. I was so furious."
  
  He hasn't cut the 'Potter' cord just yet: "I've had a happy and very healthy, really enjoyable childhood, and a fantastically interesting one. I genuinely think I am a better person for having done these films than I possibly would have been had I not. I wouldn't have half the confidence that I have. I'm not saying that I'm a brazenly confident person. But I'm kind of sure of myself intellectually. And I know I wouldn't have been if I had stayed in school because, before I did 'Potter,' my confidence had been more or less destroyed by a couple of teachers. So I had it all restored by the people who taught me on the films."
  
  Take the Ultimate 'Harry Potter' Quiz!
  
  Being declared England's richest teenager -- and following in George Clooney's footsteps: "I have been very, very fortunate. But I'm not going to spend it on flashy cars or particular extravagances. What it does in terms of my career, which is how I like to look at it -- it gives me the thing that George Clooney has, where he can go off and do a big-budget movie like 'Ocean's Eleven,' make a lot of money for it, and then go and do stuff that won't pay as much. Money will never be the focus for me. That's not how I've been brought up."