The Book of Daniel Radcliffe

You portray Allen Ginsberg in your next film, Kill Your Darlings.
I feel I am incredibly lucky to be playing him. Despite the damage from his upbringing and his mother and what he went through, he really emerged into the most fully formed open, compassionate human being out of all of the Beats. He’s certainly the one you’d be most comfortable spending time around, I think. When you watch footage of him and William Burroughs together and see how much they care about each other and how close they were and the love between all those guys and the incredible sadness that brought them all together that they were all carrying in some degree. It’s great.

This is director John Krokidas’s first feature film. What convinced you to take this leap of faith with a novice filmmaker?
You obviously haven’t met John. [Laughs] John is one of the most passionate people you could ever meet. For me this is an exceptional script. The scenes were almost completely devoid of exposition, yet the story was always being moved along and any information being given out in those scenes is given as information about the characters and not just handed out for the audience to understand. It’s a brilliantly written script. You meet John and he has such unwavering belief in this project and he’s enthusiastic and fun and I thought, Yes, I want to dive in with you and make this happen. I think that’s why so many people were drawn to this film. It’s myself, Lizzy Olson, Ben Foster, Jack Huston, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kyra Sedgwick ... an amazing group of people. That’s due to the script and John’s passion for the project.