Daniel Radcliffe Wants To Be A Director

Though it's certainly not for everyone who tries their hand at it, plenty of actors catch the directing bug in the span of their career. The latest to express interest in directing is Daniel Radcliffe, the former Harry Potter star who's spent his entire adult life trying his damnedest to distance himself from Harry Potter. And hey, it's a move that makes a hell of a lot of sense for a person who literally grew up on film sets.

Radcliffe's directoral ambitions came out during an interview with Variety during the promotional tour for his romantic comedy What If:

I would love to direct. I do it in my head when I’m watching other directors direct. ‘No, don’t say that to them!’ I think I’m quite good with people. Part of being a director is knowing how different actors work in different ways. I’d enjoy it.

Seriously, though: Radcliffe has spent 15 years (ages 10 to 25) working on film sets. He's seen a number of directors work through their process, under a wide variety of budgets and circumstances. He's experienced firsthand what works and what doesn't when communicating with actors and crew. If that's not a grade-A cinematic education without the film school, I don't know what is.

It's obvious his experience has given him a lot of opinions on how to most effectively do the job:

The mistake I see even the really good directors make is they assume they are the only creative person on that set. And actually, make-up artists are not just girls with brushes who put foundation on, and costume guys are not just there to stitch up accidents. They are all immensely creative people.

Radcliffe currently has no plans for when exactly his directoral career would begin, but I've got a strangely high amount of confidence in him — and stepping behind the scenes would certainly be a way to further chart his own post-Potter path. He should probably have brunch with Chris Evans while he's at it.