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Daniel Radcliffe, 36, says he used to “run on coffee and cigarettes,” before quitting smoking
The Harry Potter alum tells WSJ.Magazine that although he “doesn’t look like a person who would be a fitness freak,” he loves hitting the gym
The actor, who stars in new NBC comedy The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, shares that now he’s an early riser, thanks to his son
Daniel Radcliffe says he used to “run on coffee and cigarettes all day” before giving up smoking, sharing that he’s now “pretty intense” about fitness.
“I do weights, circuit training, cardio. I don’t look like a person who would be a fitness freak, but I’m pretty intense about it,” The Harry Potter alum, 36, tells WSJ. Magazine. “I feel like I’m a cliché of a former alcoholic or anyone who had any kind of addictive personality and then switched that addiction to being about the gym.”
Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe in NBC’s ‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins’
Credit: Scott Gries/NBC
The actor — who stars alongside Tracy Morgan in the new NBC comedy The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins — first shared his sobriety in 2012, later describing alcohol as “the easiest way to escape being self-conscious.”
As he told WSJ.Magazine, “I used to run on coffee and cigarettes all day, and then I gave up smoking. Now I just run on coffee all day.”
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He’s also an early riser — thanks to his two-year-old son, whom he shares with longtime girlfriend Erin Darke. (He and Darke have not shared their son’s name publicly.)
“I have a small child, so my body has trained to wake up at about 5:30. My son has a night-light where you can program it to turn a different color at a certain time, so at 6:30 it will flick from blue to yellow and I will hear him scream, ‘It’s yellow, COME GET ME!’ “ Radcliffe shared.
Daniel Radcliffe in New York City in December 2025.
Credit: Bruce Glikas/WireImage
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Although he’s been open about his past struggles with alcohol, Radcliffe — and his fellow Harry Potter stars, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson — have largely escaped the public scandals that plague other child stars. While people will look to “the Harry Potter kids in general as being a good example of, ‘See, it can all be fine,’ and yes it can be … we all worked really hard on ourselves to make it fine. I honestly wouldn’t want my son to act or to become famous,” he tells the outlet.
“I’m also so aware of how tricky it can be—I think it’s very different growing up on a Harry Potter set in the U.K. The [same] crew was mostly there for 10 years, so we were surrounded by a group of people that really cared about us. I was also really lucky with my parents. They had the right balance of being like, This is all really special and really cool, but also there’s some stuff about this that is really weird.”
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