But with two more movies in the pipeline, will he ever escape the wizard's clutches, asks Suzanne Breen

IT'S BEEN a magic carpet ride into adulthood. With round spectacles and an ever-so-geeky appearance, he's a complete contrast to seriously sexy Bond hero Daniel Craig. But this Daniel has an even bigger army of female fans and is worth an awful lot more.

Next week, Daniel Radcliffe turns 18 and comes into the 30m fortune he has earned from the Harry Potter movies.

He's the most famous teenager on the planet. In South America, tomato tins are made in his image. In China, socks carry sinicised versions of his face.

And in every Western country, screaming girls want to be more than just friends.

He won't buy a sports car when he comes into his millions. He can't drive but, if he does buy a car, it'll be a Volkswagen Polo . . ."they're efficient and nobody looks at them."

He might play the young wizard in the films based on JK Rowling's books, but Daniel Radcliffe has his feet on the ground.

The fifth film in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released last week.

Radcliffe has signed up to two more, after which he will be worth 60m.

He was plucked from relative obscurity, aged 11, to be Harry. "I'm always going to come up against the child-star tag, with everybody expecting me to be a bit of a tosser, " he says. "I get a kick out of proving people wrong."

He lives in an ordinary terrace beside Fulham football club's grounds with mum Marcia, a casting director, and dad Alan, a Northern Ireland-born literary agent who gave up his job to chaperone his son. Harry Potter hears his mother screaming as she is murdered.

To prepare him for the impact on his character, Daniel talked to his father who, as an eight-yearold, heard a neighbour scream as the UDA killed her husband.

His parents look after Daniel's border collies, Binka and Nugget, when he's away filming. The Radcliffes were always passionate about the theatre. Daniel remembers songs from Chicago resonating through the house on summer holidays.

An only child, he was timid and was bullied at school. Acting saved him.

His first role was in a BBC production of David Copperfield. His mother suggested it because of the bullying: "Mum thought, if we send him for the David Copperfield audition, he won't get it, but he'll have done something none of the other kids has."

Harry fell just as magically at his feet a year later. They'd auditioned thousands of boys but nobody was right. To forget about Potter for a night, producer David Heyman went to the West End to see Stones in His Pocket by Belfast playwright Marie Jones. He spotted Daniel in the audience with his parents, and knew he was Harry.

The film set was like "a theme park" to Daniel: "I was swinging on the scaffolding and the bane of the costume department's life, constantly dirty and ripping clothes."

He played tricks on fellow actors. Robbie Coltrane was perplexed to find his mobile reprogrammed in Turkish.

Once, Daniel put a fake blood capsule in his mouth, pretended to trip on the stairs and let blood pour from his mouth before a horrified crew. He returned to school between films but was again bullied, although now he had an escape: "I could say to myself, in six weeks I'd be back on set."

When filming, he had private tutors. His studies have now stopped, but he's retaining an English tutor to help him read difficult books such asUlysses. Unlike other child stars, he hasn't thrown hissy fits, gone to war with his parents, or done drugs or drink. Diet coke is his tipple, gallons of it. "You're going to make me say I'm a coke addict, " he joked with one journalist.

Other temptations, or maybe terrors, have arisen. At a New York premiere, when he was 14, he was mobbed by screaming female fans with 'Marry Me' and 'Dishy Dan' lipsticked across their faces. One tried to climb in the passenger window as his limousine stopped at traffic lights.

Another held up a banner, 'Mrs Radcliffe is here'. Daniel says his mother was confused "because she's Mrs Radcliffe."

A girl, dressed only in a towel, waited for him when he was 11. "I didn't know what to do with myself. I was just discovering what everything was, " he confesses, before adding he wishes it would happen now: "She was very attractive. I'd be up for something now."

At 16, he apparently dated a 24-year-old trainee hairdresser he met on set. He currently doesn't have a girlfriend but says he wants one. "Do I worry girls are only interested in me because of who I am?

I'm 17. Do you think I care?" He tries too hard to create the impression he's sexually ravenous.

He stared out the window during one media interview. "Sorry, a very beautiful girl just walked out of that shop, " he apologised. Another time, he rhapsodised about "a beautiful red-head in the crowd."

Up close, he seems scared. At a recent reception, he "looked like he'd lost the will to live, " an onlooker noted, as yet another admirer requested a picture.

He overplays his cool credentials too.

He's always saying how Gary Oldman, his on-screen godfather, taught him to play bass guitar. He's into punk and indie bands . . . the Zutons and Arctic Monkeys . . . and declares pop "shouldn't be made or sold" and music stores should be fined for selling it.

He finds little in common with boys his age: "I don't know what to say to them." His best friend is Will Steggle, 41, his dresser in Harry Potter.

Daniel performs magic tricks at parties and says he sometimes doesn't know where Daniel begins and Harry ends.

The seventh and final Potter film will be released in 2010. "I'm never going to disown Harry. I'm proud of him, " he says, but he's already preparing for life after.

In February, he took the title role in the West End revival of Peter Shaffer's Equus.

The world's most innocent teenage icon needs dark, edgy roles to recast himself.

They don't come more risque than a disturbed stable boy, sexually obsessed with horses, who simulates sex with a woman on stage, then blinds six horses.

He performed nude in front of a 1,000strong audience, including his parents. He trained hard in the gym to improve his physique, winning rave reviews and a big gay following.

There have been other projects too.

December Boys, a coming-of-age Australian film will be released in September, and filming will soon begin on My Boy Jack, about Rudyard Kipling's son.

He won't complain when the seventh book is finally filmed and he is free to grow up. "Rowling promises eighth book, " he read recently. It caused "a minor heart attack." But it turned out she was only contributing to a charity book about magic.

"I must be the only kid in the world, " declares Daniel, "who doesn't want an eighth Harry Potter book."

C.V.

Occupation: actor
Born: Fulham, London, 23 July 1989
In the news because: the fifth Harry Potter film has just been released