Daniel Jacob Radcliffe was born on July 23, 1989, in Fulham, London, England, to Marcia Gresham (née Jacobson),a casting agent, and Alan Radcliffe, a literary agent. His father has a Northern Irish Protestant background, while his mother was born in South Africa to a Jewish family with roots in Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Germany.
As a young boy, Daniel began performing in small school productions. He landed his first role in the TV movie David Copperfield (1999) as the young David Copperfield. He later appeared in The Tailor of Panama (2001) as Mark Pendel, the son of Harry and Louisa Pendel, played by Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis recommended Daniel for the role of Harry Potter, which he was subsequently cast in by director Chris Columbus.
The film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) was released in November 2001, and Daniel's performance as Harry Potter earned him international recognition. He reprised his role in the sequels Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002),Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004),and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).
After the Harry Potter series, Daniel appeared in December Boys (2007) in Australia and then in the TV movie My Boy Jack (2007). He took on his first stage role in the West End play Equus (2007),receiving critical acclaim. He also voiced a character in an episode of The Simpsons in 2010.
Radcliffe made his Broadway debut in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (2011) as J. Pierrepont Finch, a role previously held by Robert Morse and Matthew Broderick. He received positive reviews and earned nominations for his performance. He left the show in January 2012.
His first post-Harry Potter project was the horror film The Woman in Black (2012),in which he played a man who experiences strange events after dealing with the legal matters of a mysterious woman who has just died. He then portrayed American poet Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings (2013) and starred in The F Word (2013) and Horns (2013).
Radcliffe won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as Billy Claven in The Cripple of Inishmaan (2013). He starred as Igor in Victor Frankenstein (2015),a science fiction horror film, and as a wealthy villain in Now You See Me 2 (2016) and an oftentimes mobile corpse in Swiss Army Man (2016).
Daniel Radcliffe has made friends with his co-stars from the Harry Potter films, including Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.
