It's true what they say about Daniel Radcliffe...

Just recently, friends of mine introduced me to Daniel Radcliffe. Yes, the very man, of stage (Equus) and screen (The Woman in Black) fame. "Hi, I'm Dan, Mary" is the first thing that he said to me.

I met him after the filming of The Kumars for Sky. My friend and colleague Tom Leopold was a writer on the show.

Dan has a firm handshake and his sapphire-blue eyes are even more striking in real life, than they are on film. His current long-locks hairstyle is not his idea and not even his hair! He has had hair extensions for the part of Igor, the assistant to Dr. Frankenstein.  During the episode of The Kumars, Dan joked that his skin is naturally pale enough of the role of Igor, and that the make-up artists use a foundation on him called, 'rice-paper'.


The re-make of Mary Shelley's greatest work is being filmed in London at the moment. But Mary Shelley never created the character of Igor. The hunchback helper of Dr Frankenstein makes no appearance in her horror story. Igor was the creation of film-makers and inserted into the film, as a companion to Dr Frankenstein, to make him seem a less lonely figure. But the deformed helper of von Frankenstein has evolved to the point where in the current version, the story is told completely from the perspective of Igor.

I was quite impressed with Daniel Radcliffe, or 'Dan' as he prefers. People swarm around him all the time, and he remains unflappable, but doesn't react as though he's pestered.  I have heard reports from friends in Dublin who met Dan that he was polite and kind. (He was in Dublin to film What If with Zoe Kazan). And it was great to find out that this is true. One such fan is Raymond Arroyo. As a fellow actor, Raymond met up with Dan in June, and congratulated the young Brit on his stellar acting in The Cripple of Inishmaan. Raymond did his classical acting training under Stella Adler, and he esteems Daniel Radcliffe's considerable abilities.