Daniel Radcliffe Explained Why He Was "Terrified" Of Alan Rickman While Making "Harry Potter"

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You know Daniel Radcliffe from many, many things at this point...

Including, of course, the Harry Potter film series.

And if you're a fan, you also know the late, great Alan Rickman played the series' character Severus Snape.

Daniel and Alan appeared across the franchise's eight films together. That's a lot of time on set together, and it's no surprise that the actors developed a rapport (more on that in a minute).

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But as Daniel revealed in a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused with Josh Horowitz podcast, he was initially so intimidated by the legendary actor that he thought that there might be some animosity toward him.

The topic came up when Josh played Daniel a clip from a 2016 interview with Alan, which Daniel had never heard before, in which he praised the child actor stars of the Harry Potter franchise.

“As much as I was doing it for seven weeks, they were doing it for 52 weeks,” he said. “This was their life from 12 to 22. And you would watch it from the sidelines at times and throw the odd lifeline in because there was so little time for that. It’s only in recent years that I’ve managed to sit down in a cafe with Daniel in New York. He was at a theater, and I was at another. Huge pride to go to see him... How dare he be dancing as well as the New York dancers. He worked at it.”

“Thanks for showing that. I’ve never seen that before. Thank you,” Daniel replied, before saying that he was "intimidated" by Alan when they first started working together. "How can you not be by that voice?” he said.

“Even hearing that voice you forget quite how low it was until it echoes through you. I was so intimidated by him for the first three movies. I was terrified by him and was like, ‘This guy hates me.’"

Daniel went on to say that Alan eventually connected with him after he recognized how passionate Daniel was about acting. "Somewhere along the lines he saw that I really wanted to do this and work at it," he said.

Daniel also recounted another touching story about Alan — specifically, how he once cut his vacation short to see Daniel perform in the 2007 Broadway revival of the play Equus.

“He would take me out afterwards, and we would talk about it. He was one of the first people to say like, ‘You should look at voice coaching and investigate all this stuff.’"

"I am so lucky."

Watch the entire podcast here.

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