Do we like Daniel Radcliffe?
Our score: 9 out of 10. Years of backing LGBTQ+ people in his own words and with his own money, and we found no harmful words or company.
Radcliffe was a kid when Harry Potter swallowed his life, and he has spent adulthood being refreshingly honest about it. He told The Atlantic that the boy wizard will be the first line of his obituary, and said that when the films finished he had no idea what his career would be.
What he did next is the good bit: he kept choosing odd, brave-ish work instead of coasting. He won a Tony in 2024 for Merrily We Roll Along, picked up a 2026 nomination for the solo show Every Brilliant Thing, and has been playing a filmmaker opposite Tracy Morgan in NBC's sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.
Now the harm check, which is where he shines. When J.K. Rowling's tweets on gender blew up in June 2020, he wrote an essay on the Trevor Project's site saying transgender women are women, and apologised to fans whose love of the books was dented. He was a Potter lead taking on the author of Potter, which is not nothing.
He didn't walk it back. In 2024 he said Rowling's stance makes him “really sad, ultimately” and that he would keep supporting the rights of all LGBTQ people. We found no harmful statements from him, no dodgy company, and no court cases or credible allegations in the reporting we checked, though we also found little on climate or migration either way.
The Trevor Project link goes back to 2009, when he filmed a public service announcement for the LGBTQ+ youth crisis line. In 2011 the charity gave him its Hero Award, and he dedicated it to the staff picking up the phones. That is a decade-plus of showing up for a cause, long before it was a flashpoint.
On the new HBO series he has been graceful. He told Stephen Colbert in March he's delighted to see the role passed on, said a clean break makes sense, and had earlier written a note of encouragement to Dominic McLaughlin, the young actor cast as Harry. No sour grapes from the original.