He could have opted to sit on his millions but the magic lives on for Daniel Radcliffe, as Alison Jones discovers.

After 10 years as the boy who lived, the question was what would the boy do next?

The triumph of being the face of one of the most successful British movie franchises ever could not be repeated but could Daniel Radcliffe carve out for himself a meaningful career in film?

He at least knew what he didn’t want to do.

“I was once offered to play in a remake of the Wizard of Oz and they were after Rupert (Grint) and Emma (Watson) as well for two of the other parts.

“I would play the Cowardly Lion. But this was a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion. Presumably, Emma was going to play Dorothy and Rupert was, I guess, Scarecrow.”

To no-one’s shock he politely declined.

“What was I thinking!” he says, laughing. “So anything crap I suppose isn’t what I was looking for.”

With an estimated fortune in the tens of millions it would have been quite easy for him to indulge in a kind of mid-youth crisis and start frittering it away on wild parties and hedonism as his acting star waned.

But anyone who thought that clearly hasn’t met a 22-year-old with a work ethic like his.

Even as the final spells were being incanted, the last wands waved and the broomsticks put back in the cupboard, Dan was a man with a plan.

First, he was going to reinvent himself as a song and dance star with a run on Broadway in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

But even as he was practising his jazz hands, he managed to squeeze in another movie, starring in Victorian-set spine chiller, The Woman In Black.

Originally a book, now hailed as one of the classic ghost stories, by Susan Hill, it has already been adapted into a stage production that has been running in the West End since he was a baby.

“On the last day of filming of Potter I read the script for the first time and was just blown away by it,” he recalls.

“I have never leaned towards horror in my own life in terms of what I am interested in, so the fact I was so into it made it even more exciting.”

Scripted by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class), and directed by Eden Lake’s James Watkins, there have been some significant changes to the story.

The main one is that Daniel’s character, Arthur Kipps, is a grieving widower (albeit one in his 20s) with a young son.

“The energy level of the character being very different from my own. Harry is somebody where my own natural energy and attack is very useful.

“But Arthur is somebody who had been stripped of his vitality and zeal by the tragic circumstances of his wife’s death. Playing someone who’d become completely detached from life and the world was a challenge.”

He was also wary of the responsibility of having to help coax a performance out of the boy who would play his son, and persuaded James to audition his godson, Misha Handley.

“People having seen me in a schoolboy outfit for 10 years, I was sort of wondering if they would buy into me as a father.