Photo and graphic credit: The Daily Telegraph
Daniel Radcliffe was supposedly looking for a hot Aussie girl, one in particular that he met at the Australian Film Industry awards. Two girls have come forward, claiming they met the boy wizard/millionaire, and producing photographs to prove it.

To be fair, I’d have to admit that both girls meet Daniel’s description of them as being ‘stunning’ in appearance.

The first girl is Cassi McKay, she’s a 20-year-old insurance worker and is heading to London. Not to meet Daniel, that’s just a coincidence. She’s been in a committed relationship for over two years.

“We said hello and had a quick chat and for the rest of the night, just because I was fascinated, we were sort of smiling and making eye contact,” she said.

“I couldn’t believe when he said he was looking for the girl.”

Although she is committed to her current relationship, Ms McKay said she would be keen to organise a second audience with Radcliffe while she was in the UK.

“I’ve told my boyfriend about him and I’d be keen to meet up,” she said.

Daily Telegraph

Cassi, who approached the newspaper herself and posed for photographs, says she hopes “people don’t think I want my 15 minutes of fame or anything”. Well, what are you looking for then, if you aren’t pursuing the boy wizard, or looking for some notoriety? Why come forward at all?

The second girl, who was actually photographed with Daniel and Cassi, is Savannah Blount, a 23-year-old sax player at the event.

Blount said she was charmed by the teen wizard and was happy to go on a date with him if the chance arose during one of her regular UK tours.

“He was quite lovely. He was very charming, very polite,” she told the Melbourne edition of MX. “Maybe if I was working over there or touring, you never know.”

Though not a Harry Potter fan, Blount is attracted to the $50 million dollar man.

“Handsome? Yes, yes - and very short. I’m more for the taller type of guy.

“I’ve got a lovely boyfriend who is quite concerned - no, he thinks it’s funny.”

Daily Telegraph

But what does Daniel’s publicist have to say about all this?

“(Radcliffe’s comments) were meant in jest, but sadly been blown out of all proportion,” Radcliffe’s London-based representative, Vanessa Davies, told New York’s Daily News newspaper.

Daily Telegraph

I love it when I’m right, and it doesn’t happen very often. It seems that I was correct about Daniel Radcliffe’s mystery Australian girl – he was having on the reporters at the Daily Telegraph.

At any rate, you can vote on which girl Daniel should choose, as if it’s all a matter of an online poll. The current lady in the lead for Harry Potter is Cassi with 38% of the vote. Personally I, along with 26% of voters, think that he should give both crazies a miss.

If you are, like me, a sucker for a love story (I even think TomKat are kind of sweet) then this is really nice. Daniel Radcliffe, who’s been buzzing around Australia doing some films, fell in love at an awards ceremony. Be prepared for a slightly corny tale – they met eyes across a crowded room, but never introduced themselves.

The actor, who has often spoken about not being able to find a girlfriend, has revealed his love of “brilliant” Australian women - and one in particular that he met backstage during an AFI awards ceremony.

“There was one girl there, oh my god, she had these eyes that just looked at me like she wanted to pounce on me,” Radcliffe said yesterday. “She stared at me the whole night and I was going to get her number and then I couldn’t find her.

“I must have walked around that party for an hour trying to look for this girl, like some sad pathetic dweeb but it would have been so worth it.”

When asked if The Daily Telegraph could help find her, Radcliffe blushed and regretfully shook his head.

“I don’t know, I don’t know her name, I can’t remember her name. It was one of those things but she was stunning,” he said.

Daily Telegraph

Now the media in Australia is trying to identify Daniel’s mystery girl – which shouldn’t be too hard, because I think only a few hundred people attend the Australian Film Industry Awards (where the couple locked eyes) and not many of them would be close to Daniel’s age. Unless he likes older women, but since he calls her a ‘girl’ I’m guessing she’s closer to 20 than 50.

Actually, I’m not sure if Daniel is having the reporters on in this interview – earlier this month he confirmed to TV Guide magazine that he is still dating his Equus co-star Laura O’Toole.

I’m really hoping that he’s just having the Daily Telegraph on with his ‘mystery woman’, and that a heap of girls come out of the woodwork claiming to be Daniel’s lost love. Then they can make a Bachelor-style reality show.

Daniel Radcliffe is shown at the National Movie Awards on 9/28/07, thanks to PRPhotos. Credit: Solarpix.com

Harry Potter is coming to Broadway… nude. Okay I realize Daniel Radcliffe isn’t actually Harry Potter… but he so is. I can’t really look at him without seeing a boy wizard who needs his glasses and a scarf. Daniel is reprising his role in “Equus,” a play about a psychiatrist who tries to treat a young man (Radcliffe’s character) who has a religious and sexual fascination with horses. The psychiatrist is being played by Richard Griffiths, who played Harry’s cruel Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter films.

Harry Potter is headed to The Great White Way. Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the “Harry Potter” movies, will make his Broadway debut on Sept. 5, playing the disturbed stable boy in a revival of Peter Shaffer’s play, “Equus,” it was announced Tuesday.

Radcliffe, 18, earned rave reviews for his performance in the London production of the Tony Award-winning play. He also received loads of media attention for appearing naked onstage - a departure from his wholesome image as the bespectacled boy wizard in the big-screen adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s best-selling fantasy novels.

“Equus” begins previews Sept. 5 for a limited 22-week run at the Broadhurst Theatre. The play opens Sept. 25-Feb. 8, 2009. Thea Sharrock directs.

[From the Huffington Post]

Supposedly the play is amazing. It sounds a bit odd, but that’s generally a good foundation for a spectacular play. There’s something about the thought of seeing Harry Potter totally naked that seems so wrong to me. There was much talk about Daniel’s nudity the first time around during the play’s London showing, and I imagine the same will happen in New York.

Pictures from Celebrity.Log via Lipstick.

The “Harry Potter” books may be complete, but there are still three full length films coming, to make a whopping eight Harry Potter movies in total. The movie version of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be in theaters at the end of this November. And the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which was chock full of plot that sped by at a breakneck pace, is going to be split up into two films in order to cover all the stuff that happened. (Rowling has not definitively ruled out another book, saying “I will not say never, but I have no plans to write an eighth book.” She later clarified that if she did write another book it wouldn’t be for at least another 10 years.)

The films have made around $4.5 billion at the box office, and that’s not counting the books and merchandise, which are said to make the franchise worth $15 billion. So you can’t blame them for wanting to milk this for all it’s worth, but it’s also supposedly to be true to the plot of Deathly Hallows:

Warner Bros. Pictures and the producers behind the $4.5-billion film franchise featuring the beloved boy wizard will split the seventh and final novel in the J.K. Rowling series into two films.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” will hit theaters in November 2010, followed by “Part II” in May 2011, a decision that is being met around the world with fans’ cheers but also plenty of cynical smirks. The publishing industry is learning to live without new “Potter” releases, but Hollywood just pulled off a trick that will keep its profitable hero on his broom into the next decade.

Any twist in the “Potter” universe is the stuff of global news bulletins. The books were a publishing sensation. And to an entire generation, the film saga has become a heartfelt touchstone on the level of “The Wizard of Oz” and as culturally and commercially ubiquitous as the “Star Wars” series. For all those reasons, everyone involved in the franchise is jumping forward to say an eighth film would be to serve the story, not the bottom line.

Daniel Radcliffe, the star of the franchise, said it was the dense action of the final novel that made the decision, not any executive or ledger.

“I think it’s the only way you can do it, without cutting out a huge portion of the book,” Radcliffe said. “There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut — although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans — but the seventh book doesn’t really have any subplots. It’s one driving, pounding story from the word go.”

The same could be said about the relentless “Potter” franchise, which hit screens for the first time in 2001. The five “Potter” films to date have averaged $282 million in U.S. grosses, but the overall receipts go well beyond that. The faces of the stars stare out from DVDs, video games, tie-in books, toys, clothing, candy wrappers and a staggering array of other items. By some estimates, the brand represents a $20-billion enterprise, and that’s without the planned “Potter”-themed complex opening next year at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.

[From The LA Times]

I’ve read all the Harry Potter books and have seen all of the films, in most cases right when they came out. At first I was a big fan, but by the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, I thought that the tone changed and that Rowling was trying to cram too much in. This didn’t stop me from devouring the rest of the books and films, so it’s not like the quality dropped that much, and maybe it was inevitable that they evolved and grew along with the characters.

The last book was disappointing to me, and I know a lot of you will disagree. I will admit that I read it quickly and could not put it down and that it was very entertaining. It just didn’t get into the characters enough for me and it seemed like too much was happening on a surface level. I also was kind of baffled by the afterlife subplot, and thought that part was totally unnecessary. You could almost tell that Rowling was harried when she wrote it, and that she was trying to tie up all the loose ends instead of get into the motivations and psychology of the characters. The end part where everyone was married and happy bugged the shit out of me, too. (I know this is said to have been written well ahead of the final book, and that Rowling was supposedly doing everyone a favor by letting us know. She should have saved it, IMO.)

I’ll see these movies, and they’re going to be blockbusters that are entertaining and engaging, like all the other Harry Potter films. Even though I thought Deathly Hallows was the “worst” Harry Potter book, that’s definitely relative. It was still fun to read and full of compelling scenes, and the films are sure to be the same. The last Lord of The Rings movie, The Return of The King, could have easily been broken up into two films too, but it kept my interest until the end. And I would have paid $20 to see it.

Images are stills from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, thanks to Allmoviephoto.

It’s dangerous to be a boy wizard these days. Several media outlets are reporting that there has been a very credible and serious threat made against the life of “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe. The threat is serious enough that Radcliffe is now being guarded by former Special Air Service army guards. They’re going all-out in his security plan and even having Daniel switch cars multiple times during a trip.

A source told Britain’s The Sun newspaper: “There is a real concern for Daniel’s welfare. No one has said what has been going on. It’s all hush-hush - but security has been massively ramped up. Daniel has the four guards with him at all times.”

The 18-year-old star is filming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and although the nature of the threat - which was received via Warner Bros. who are producing the movie - is unclear, bosses aren’t prepared to take any chances.

The actor switched cars three times on Saturday night as we went to and from the film set. His regular driver - used by the star for seven years and considered “part of the family” - has been temporarily replaced. Daniel has now been given a “chase car” which follows the vehicle in which he is travelling in case of emergency. The source said of the SAS guards: “They are all experts in evasive driving, threat assessment and close protection. This isn’t about keeping an eye out for the paparazzi - these guys are looking for something far more sinister.”

[From the Herald Sun]

This is the same kind of protection given to Prince William and Prince Harry. Which means Daniel is either some kind of national treasure, or whatever threat they’re worried about is pretty serious. I don’t want to be a jerk, but I’m not sure starring in a movie is worth risking your life. “Harry Potter” is great and all, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to risk life and limb to be in it. It’s good that no one’s taking any chances with Daniel’s safety, but it sure makes you wonder who on earth would threaten his life, and why? I’m guessing it has something to do with some kind of dark force, some magic, and some freaky trees in the woods. Seriously though, I hope they figure out who’s making this threat and lock them up, no one should have to live like that.

Daniel Radcliffe recently split from his girlfriend, Equus co-star Lauren O’Toole, but he has a new squeeze, possibly the only one that would make Harry Potter fans happy.

The onlooker said: “They arrived quite late at the pub - about 10pm - and sat outside, using each other’s bodies for warmth.

“Emma, who was wearing a black top and matching pashmina, kept looking over her shoulder nervously as if she didn’t wanted to be recognised. When people started to notice the couple and began pointing, she wrapped her scarf around her head so only her eyes were peeping out.

“Daniel found her new look hysterical and started laughing. Throughout the night, in fact, he just kept giggling like a love-struck teen.

“The pair seemed totally absorbed in one another’s company, though - they were chatting and joking easily until just before closing time.

“They then left the pub, heads together and whispering, and headed in the direction of Daniel’s home nearby.”

[From The Mirror]

Emma recently split from Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell, also known as Kirsten Dunst’s ex, after her parents expressed disapproval at the match. Telling your 17-year-old daughter that you don’t like her boyfriend is probably her cue to decide she’s madly in love with him, just to drive her parents crazy.

Given that Hermoine and Harry - whoops, I mean Emma and Daniel - are both newly single, this “date” is probably just friends getting together as friends. This is what single people do. They might not even have realized that it was Valentine’s Day.

On a side note, Johnny Borrell was recently kicked out of a hotel room for throwing cushions. He’s obviously still in rock star training - doesn’t he know it’s throwing televisions out of the window, and putting a Rolls Royce in the swimming pool?

Picture note by Celebitchy: Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, are shown at their Hand, Foot and Wand print ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on 7/10/07, thanks to Splash News.

Harry Potter hunk Daniel Radcliffe has a girlfriend, which in itself may be news to send a thousand teenage girls to their bedrooms in tears. It seems she liked what she saw of Daniel during his nude scenes in the play Equus – she’s actually the understudy for the female role in the play, Jill.

His girlfriend, named Laura O’Toole, isn’t quite as financially solvent as Daniel. She sells oats to pay her bills.

Actress Laura O’Toole - who has been dating the millionaire ‘Harry Potter’ star since May - earns £7 an hour selling juice and yoghurt on health food stall Moma at London’s Liverpool Street Station from 6am to 11am.

She said: “I have to keep the pennies rolling in. We all have to pay the bills.”

Laura, 22, met Daniel, 18, while they were both starring in the raunchy West End show ‘Equus’, but she is determined to pay her own way in the relationship.

A friend said: “She doesn’t want to rely on his cash. She knows she has to stand on her own two feet.”

Divine

While her sentiments here seem so lovely and down to earth, I’m wondering if after she and Daniel split a quick tell all interview with a couple of British tabloids might sort out her bill payments. When did I become so cynical about young love?

Daniel seems a little jaded about his fame nowadays too, saying he’ll never have a one-night-stand as he wouldn’t be able to stand the anticipation of seeing the tell-all appearing in the London tabloids.

“No, I wouldn’t (have a one night stand). Because the next few weeks would be awful, worrying she’d sell her story to the press.”

Ireland Online

Daniel will be heading to Broadway with Equus.

Header picture via The Daily Mail.

Daniel Radcliffe turns 18, and gets the $40 million he earned and had put in trust released to him. He had this to say about his fortune.

“I don’t plan to be one of those people who, as soon as they turn 18, suddenly buy themselves a massive sports car collection or something similar,” he said earlier this month. “I don’t think I’ll be particularly extravagant.

“The things I like buying are things that cost about 10 pounds - books and CDs and DVDs.”

TVNZ

Why not spend it on race cars, yachts and holidays? I would. I wonder how long it will be until he changes his tune. Suddenly he says “I have a licence, I need a car. A car is an investment. I’ll spend up and get this Ferrari.” I hope he gets a red one. My first car was red. It wasn’t a Ferrari.

Harry potter sold 8.3 million copies in 24 hours, in the United States alone. In Britain the figure was 2.65 million copies. At my local bookshop it was crazy (I forgot, I was going to buy a magazine, couldn’t get in the door) while at K-Mart there was just a guy in a wizard suit standing next to a very full table of Harry Potter books. He was a really big guy, turned out he was actually a security officer. In a wizard costume. Which was pretty funny, but was I going to laugh at him? Not likely. He was really big.

Tab, The Calgary Sun, caglecartoons.com

Rupert Grint, Danielle Radcliffe and Emma Watson, the young stars of the wildly popular Harry Potter movies, were immortalized in a foot, hand and wandprint ceremony at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood yesterday.

In a recent interview in Details magazine, Radcliffe said he has no desire to date an actress and that he thinks that displays of immense wealth are obnoxious:

“I think it would be very hard to go out with an actress, because they’re mad. Some actresses are just insane. I’ve never worked with a nasty actress—they’re all absolutely delightful. But completely barking…”

“Even when I was very young and before any of this had happened, I remember being repulsed by ostentatious displays of wealth,” he says.

“People who have car collections—I never understood that. I always thought that was unnecessary. It’s not beautiful, it’s not creative. It’s just showing how much money you’ve got.”

[From Details.com]

In the interview, Radcliffe says he had a “brief heart attack” when he heard via text message that JK Rowling was planning an eighth Harry Potter book. He was relieved to find that she just planned to contribute to a charity book on magic. He will receive $50 million for playing Harry in the screen versions of the next two installments of the series, but fears being typecast and wants to step away from the role at some point.

The fear of being Harry Potter forever might explain his naked turn on the stage as a mentally disturbed stable hand in Equus. It might also provide motivation for the rather odd pictures of Radcliffe that accompanied his Details interview, in which he wears in a leather vest and blue contact lenses. The Daily Mail published this picture of his costar Emma Watson reacting as she saw the pictures for the first time. It’s going to take a lot more than a wardrobe change - or disrobing - for Radcliffe to escape Harry. With that kind of cash attached to the role, he may as well accept his fate. And next weekend we will learn what that fate will be.

Thanks to WENN for these pictures.

Harry Potter mania is about to hit. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is out in US theaters on Wednesday while the last book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is out next Saturday, July 21.

Advance reviews for the film are overwhelmingly positive, with a current 87% aggregate critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Several critics have written that it’s the best Harry Potter film yet, and that it’s darker and scarier than its four predecessors.

As for the book, I have to admit I’ve read all the other Harry Potter titles and although I won’t be waiting in line for it I’ll be sure to snatch up a copy within a few days of its release.

Diehard Harry Potter fans are planning a media blackout next weekend so that the end is not spoiled for them. JK Rowling has said that two characters will die at the end of the series, and a lot of speculation has surrounded her claims. She said she was crying while writing the end of the book and that she was devastated to end it. Fans want to know who dies, but not until they get a chance to read the whole book first.

Now, as the July 21 release of the seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, approaches, fans who have waited the better part of a decade to find out the ultimate fate of Harry, his friends and his nemeses are taking no chances.

But how far do they have to go? Must they close their eyes, cover their ears and scream, “LALALALA?”

Pretty much. In fact, if you want to get in touch with a rabid Harry Potter fan on the weekend of July 21-22, you might be out of luck.

Readers are planning media blackouts — no computers, no cell phones, no TV, no radio. And if that’s not enough, they’re threatening to get physical.

“I’ll beat the crap out of the person who spoils it for me,” Pritthish Chakraborty wrote in an e-mail. Chakraborty, 17, who runs a fan Web site, Harry Potter Beyond, in his native Bangladesh, was spoiled two years ago when a “friend” sent a picture message to his cell phone of the page describing Dumbledore’s death.

Many fans don’t want to give up the excitement and camaraderie of a midnight release party, but they know they’re putting themselves at risk.

“We advise people — I know this is terrible — to bring headphones to the book release and put them on as they leave the store so they’re not subject to the idiot across the street screaming the end to them,” said Melissa Anelli, a webmaster of the Leaky Cauldron, a prominent Harry Potter fan site.

[AP Article from the Houston Chronicle thanks to Viv for e-mailing it.]

In 2005 some fans were upset to have the end of the last book yelled out at them as they left bookstores early in the morning of the release.

I’m the kind of person that can’t resist looking up spoilers, but that wouldn’t keep me from reading the book as all the fun is getting there.

Here are pictures from the LA premiere of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix including Daniel Radcliffe. Emma Watson with brother, Alex, Rupert Grint, Imelda Staunton, Melissa Joan Hart, and Masi Oka. Rupert Grint is wearing a cute shirt with a picture of Harry on it.

Thanks to PRPhotos for these pics.