- Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 2001. Too old – at 14! The UK favourite for Harry was the bespectacled kid from the UK sitcom My Family, TV, 2000-2006 (his TV mum Zoë Wannamaker, played Madame Hooch). Gabriel and Daniel had both incarnated (the young days of) Charles Dickens heroes on TV in 1999 – Thomson as Young Pip in Great Expectationsand the two years younger Radcliffe was David Copperfield, which is where diector Chris Columbus first noticed him. Author JK Rowling insistedon an all-British cast (and picked Robbie Coltrane, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, herself). Potter candidates included Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy… William Moseley, who became Peter Pevensie, the Harry of The Chronicles of Narniafranchise, 2005-2010… Jack Whitehall, also seen for Ron Weasley… and one unfortunate American, Liam Aiken, who won until told “like James Bond, Harry has to be British.” So he lost the film – and its sequels – for the next eleven years. Potter’s look is greatly inspired by Alan Cox as the young John Watson in 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes – also directed by Chris Columbus. His Holmes had many a Potter similarity with the book JK Rowling would begin five years later and publish in 1997.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 1