Daniel Radcliffe is one of the most famous actors in the world, but he’s never won a major award before.
Radcliffe won a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for his performance in the hit revival of Merrily We Roll Along. The show was Radcliffe’s fifth Broadway production, but it was his first Tony nomination, despite mostly rave reviews.
Radcliffe, 34, will forever be known as the actor who played the leading wizard in all eight “Harry Potter” movies, but even before filming finished on those films, he began making adventurous choices on stage and screen that have helped him make the rare transition from child actor to respected adult performer.
In “Merrily,” Radcliffe plays Charlie Kringas, a lyricist turned playwright whose longtime friendship and collaboration with a talented composer (played by Jonathan Groff as Franklin Shepard) falls apart.
Radcliffe’s immense star power is a key factor in the success of this production, and it is expected to forever change the way we view “Merrily,” as the original 1981 production was a legendary flop.
Radcliffe has been involved with the production since playing the same role and co-star during its Off-Broadway run at the non-profit New York Theatre Workshop in 2022. The Broadway run opened last October and is scheduled to conclude on July 7.
He has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to try new things: Radcliffe first appeared on Broadway in 2008 as the lead in a revival of Equus, which required him to perform nude, and his next role was in the 2011 revival of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Trying, which also required him to sing.
He then returned to Broadway, starring in two plays, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” in 2014 and “The Lifespan of a Fact” in 2018, and also starred in the Off-Broadway play “Privacy” at the Public Theater in 2016.
He continues to make films, many of them indie-style projects, including Kill Your Darlings, Swiss Army Man and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
In an interview last month, two days after being nominated for a Tony Award, Radcliffe said he keeps returning to the stage “because I love it.”
“It’s exciting to do something that’s live and a little bit scary every night,” he says, “and the connection with the audience — being in a packed house and feeling them react to the story. I feel so lucky because it’s such an emotional show. There’s a lot of laughs, a lot of comedy, but you also hear the audience being affected emotionally as it gets to the end. It’s so rewarding to be a part of.”
