Daniel Radcliffe News

As Harry Potter fans deal with the fallout over the next installment in the franchise - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - being pushed back to July 2009, star Daniel Radcliffe is looking far beyond that release date.

He recently told MTV News that Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows will be far different in tone than any of the previous films in the franchise.

“The dark parts are with Dumbledore and Voldemort and his influence on things, and the light parts are very, very fun stuff with Ron and Hermione. Jesse Cave, who plays Lavender, is just brilliant. We had a lot of fun."

No release date has been set yet for Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows, but it's been confirmed that the final book will be split into two movies.

There were many celebrity birthdays we could have chosen to highlight today.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is 41 and Woody Harrelson is 47. Both are fine actors and we wish them the best.

But we've chosen to send our daily birthday wishes to Daniel Radcliffe. The Harry Potter actor turns 19 today.

Up next, look for Daniel Radcliffe in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It comes out on November 21.

Fans of Trainspotting will love Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Wait... what?!?

In an interview with Empire, Daniel Radcliffe compares the upcoming Harry Potter movie to the aforementioned heroin-based movie, saying "there's a fair amount of sexual energy and drug parallels."

We haven't read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - but that does quote make sense to those that have

As we reported yesterday, the final installment of Harry Potter - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - will be broken into two movies. Star Daniel Radcliffe sees this as a positive.

"It's a really positive thing," the actor told TV Guide recently. "And I think the fans will appreciate that more than had we tried to make it into one film. We'd have to cram so much in there and actually have to skip over some things. And in this seventh book, there are a lot of things you can't afford to skip over."

Of course, Radcliffe acknowledges that director David Yates and the writers have a lot of work ahead of them.

"The challenge now is for them to find out where the breaking point is between the two films," he said, "because I don't think there is an obvious place [to do so]."

The timetable for the big finale?

"When I finish the sixth film [Half-Blood Prince], which I'm shooting now, I'll take some time off â€" I'm doing Equus on Broadway â€" and a while after that I'll get on the Hallows films, which we'll film as one. That will begin early-ish next year."

Daniel Radcliffe is ready to expand his acting horizons beyond a certain young wizard.

The British star will take on his first truly grown-up role, playing slain photographer Dan Eldon in the forthcoming drama Journey.

Radliffe reportedly fought off competition from a slew of other actors for the part, from Orlando Bloom to Joaquin Phoenix. Journey will chronicle Eldon's journey to war-torn Somalia and his murder at the hands of an angry mob in 1993.

According to British newspaper The Guardian, Kathy Eldon, Dan's mother, refused to sell the rights to her son's story until she found exactly the right actor for the job.

"The timing is right and the person is right and I couldn't ask for more," said Kathy. "He has portrayed a magician for years and my Dan was a different kind of magician. There are parallels in the two Dans' lives. Daniel Radcliffe is a poet, he keeps journals and he's half Jewish. He has a puckishness, sense of humour and energy inside him which remind me of Dan."

For those unaware of the history:

Eldon was a well-respected photographer when he travelled to Kenya with a family friend to take pictures of refugees from the war in Somalia. In 1992, he went to the country on assignment for Reuters and his photographs helped draw attention to the escalating violence.

On the day he was due to return home to England, Eldon photographed the aftermath of a U.N. bomb that mistakenly killed 74 innocent Somalis. While there, a crowd of locals erupted in anger at the attack and surrounded, stoned and beat to death Eldon and three of his journalist colleagues.