Daniel Radcliffe (Photo by Ruben Nepales)

LOS ANGELES – “I don’t like having any downtime,” revealed Daniel Radcliffe when we interviewed him recently for his latest movie, “The Woman in Black.”

“I like working. A few weeks off to recharge is great but I always want to have something to go onto and something to keep me busy because otherwise I would go mad,” admitted the former wizard boy who has given up his magic stick for Broadway and more serious acting gigs.

Asked if he talked to Fil-Am Darren Criss who took over his role as J. Pierrepont Finch in the hit Broadway musical revival, “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” Daniel said he did.

“I told him to just have fun,” he revealed. “Darren does not really need any advice but I told him to attack it with a lot of energy.”

Darren, who took over the Broadway role for three weeks early this year before going back to his “Glee” role, is also known among the Harry Potter fans as the creator-composer of “A Very Potter Musical,” a musical that features the characters in the “Harry Potter” franchise.

So it was “historic” for the HP fans to have the “Harry Potter” star, Daniel, finally meet “A Very Potter Musical” star, Darren. Then what a coincidence that Darren should take over Daniel’s role in “How to Succeed.”

Appearing in his first movie after “Harry Potter,” Daniel chose to do a scary movie, “The Woman in Black,” to be his first feature film after years of doing wizard work.

We asked him what made him choose this role. The 22-year-old British actor replied, “I suppose it was the fact that I read the script for the first time, a couple of hours after I had done my last shot on ‘Potter’ and it was a horror film which was unexpected. The fact that it was so out of the blue and that I had never pictured doing one myself made it all the more sort of enticing. The fact that it felt sort of unusual for the genre in that it was a scary movie and it was frightening on the page made it interesting. It felt driven by characters and relationships and it was very strong thematically in terms of being about loss and about what happens to us if we do not move on from a loss. There was a lot going on. I knew it was absolutely what I wanted to do next.”

As for his Broadway experience, Daniel admitted that he does miss it. “It was really amazing. I do miss it,” he said. “I hope to mix stage and film for the rest of my career if I can. I love it. I grow a lot on stage. I feel like it is always a fantastic experience for me being on stage and working with people. Doing a comedy was amazing this year in terms of just really having to be that confident with an audience. It was something I had never experienced before, never had to do before and that was actually the biggest thing I took away from the year. It was amazing. I hope I get back within the next few years definitely.”

So is the Harry Potter actor scared of ghosts, we asked. “No, the short answer is I don’t particularly have any phobias not that I am aware of. I am not particularly fond of cockroaches. I don’t love them. When I was a kid, I was really freaked out by nuclear war and things like that. I thought the world was going to end tomorrow. But no, as far as any kind of paranormal experience or anything ghostly kind of things happening to me in my life, I never experienced that.”

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Another actor who is doing something different is Zac Efron, the 24-year-old heartthrob in the “High School Musical” series and former boyfriend of Fil-Am actress Vanessa Hudgens.

Doing the voice of the young boy Ted in the 3D animated adventure, “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax,” Zac admitted that working with just his voice was very interesting. “It was interesting and I did not think it was certainly one of my strong suits just doing it, a voice-over but it was fun,” he admitted. “You get to experiment. Being in those environments and just having a microphone you feel very free. I don’t know you are now free to just go crazy because that is really what they want you to do is just have so much fun as possible and be kookie and wild. So you try and like overact. I saw a video of Danny DeVito doing it and he was all over the place. It seems like it is more hand gestures than talking but it was wild. It was very funny.”

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Also in the “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” movie is singing sensation Taylor Swift in her very first movie. “I am so excited because this is my first movie junket,” she revealed when we interviewed her on the backlot of Universal Studios.

The 22-year-old singer disclosed that her favorite Dr. Seuss book is actually “The Lorax.” She said, “I was always really fascinated by this magical world that Dr. Seuss created. Only later do you realize that it is completely the world that we live in. Our forests are not pink and orange but they are beautiful. It is important to think about your life and I think that people won’t be able to see this movie without thinking about their life and the little changes that they could possibly make.”

As for her interaction with her fans, Taylor said, “It gets a little strange sometimes but it is amazing. It is so wonderful to feel the passion level of the fans when I look out into a crowd of people and I see 60,000 people. They all have ticket stubs with my name on it. It is a crazy feeling but then I look out and a lot of people are crying. It is really very sweet and I love it. I think it is endearing.”

Formerly a Manila journalist, Los Angeles-based Janet Susan R. Nepales is a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

E-mail the writer at jrnepales_624@yahoo.com for your comments and questions.