The Boy Who Lived is now the boy with a Tony.
Daniel Radcliffe, who starred in the “Harry Potter” film series from age 11 to 21, won a Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical for his performance as Charley Kringas in the Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.”
It’s Radcliffe’s first major acting award, first Tony nomination and first Tony win.
“I’m going to talk quickly and try not to cry… I don’t even need to act in this show,” Radcliffe said in her acceptance speech, referring to her close friendship with her co-stars. “I’ll never have it this good again.”
“When I finished ‘Potter,’ I had no idea what my career would be like,” Radcliffe said after accepting his award, according to a video recording posted to X by Deadline. “Playing a character for so long makes you want to do as many things as possible.”
Stephen Sondheim’s musical was an infamous flop on Broadway when it opened in 1981, closing after just 16 performances. Three years after Sondheim’s death, the show was reworked by director Maria Friedman and directed by a trio of stars, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Radcliffe.
“Harry Potter will be the first line of my obituary,” Radcliffe, 34, told the Atlantic in April. “I wanted to try so many different things on my resume, knowing that it would be the accumulation of all these things, rather than one thing, that would really transition me into people’s minds.”
After the eight-film “Potter” series, Radcliffe took up many stage and independent film opportunities.
He made his Broadway debut in 2008, starring in a revival of “Equus” that required him to perform nude. He sang on a Broadway stage for the first time in the 2011 revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
His other Broadway credits include “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Lifespan of a Fact.”
Radcliffe has been part of the cast of “Merrily We Roll Along” since its off-Broadway run at the New York Theater Workshop. The production transferred to Broadway in October and is scheduled to close on July 7.
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