Daniel Radcliffe Apple Store Q&A Highlights

On why he was attracted to the script.
Radcliffe: It was a horror film with really developed characters - it didn't feel like they were there just to set up scares later on. It was so strong thematically as well, dealing with loss and grief and not being able to move on. I like anything off the beaten track. There was 15 pages of script with no dialogue - you never see that. No one's mad enough to do that. The Artist has kind of rained on our parade really - we thought our 20 minutes of silence in the movie was really impressive! We're much scarier - The Artist has no scares...

On thrashing the locals at their pub quiz.
Radcliffe: The local pub was run by a man whose surname was Potter, and he did a quiz every week which he called Potter's Pub Quiz. The day I was there at his pub quiz he was ill! We did really well. I won the lucky dip! I won a cash prize and thought I take this - I can't come into their village and leave with their money! I gave it back.

On how much fun the shoot was.
Radcliffe: When we were making this film there were a lot of major films in production, like X-Men: First Class, Captain America, War Horse, Hugo. Really long, hard shoots, and all my friends were on them, going 'this is hard'. And we were just having a really great, relaxed shoot. I was included in so much more of the process than I was with Potter, because it's such a massive machine. In this, James had me in meetings really early on with Jane to talk about the script. I learnt more about directing with James than I had in ten years. 

On the hardest scene to film.
Radcliffe: There is a scene where I'm recovering something from a marsh, for which they dug a 10' wide, 5' deep pit and covered it in kids TV show gunge, but brown. Two days in that. It's not always pretty, but that's what I'm getting paid for! You're thinking, it's going to look great in the film, and that's what keeps you warm. There was one moment where I wanted to come up looking like the scene in Apocalypse Now, and the first time I did it I looked more like Al Jolson.

On the spookiness following him home.
Radcliffe: When they were showing us the concept posters for America, a sepia photograph of two children with their eyes scratched out, saying 'what did they see?' I got up one night and someone had brought it round to my house to show me and it was just in my apartment. I jumped a mile in the air when I saw these eyeless children staring at me!

On playing a father for the first time.
Radcliffe: My real-life godson [Misha Handley] plays my son. Because people have spent the best part of ten years seeing me in a schoolboy outfit, I thought it might be a bit of a leap for people to then see me as a father. One of the things James and I talked about was that it would help if the relationship between the son and I feels real. We auditioned five or six boys, and some were older and maybe more accomplished actors, but there was no substitute for the real chemistry. It certainly helped me, and it helped him. I didn't realise at the time, but he gives a really good performance! His mum's a theatre director, so she can put him on the right path.