For an actor who has almost exclusively worked with the new – new stories, new screenplays, new classics, new talent – the 26-year-old has a penchant for the told tales.
His latest Victor Frankenstein is the embodiment of that: looking at an old story, in a revisionist way.
“The script was the most heavily qualified script I’ve ever read in the sense that it said on the front ‘Victor Frankenstein by Max Landis based on ‘ – and then in brackets it said – ‘ the modern American pop culture zeitgeist interpretation of ‘ – more brackets – ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’,” says Radcliffe.
"Frankenstein is one of those stories like Robinson Crusoe or Dracula where we kinda know it even if we’ve never read it or seen a film of it.
“The thing that remains true for me - and that is the basis of what I think of the Frankenstein myth and story - and the most essential part of it is the argument about technology and science and what crosses a line. 
“Science and technology are obviously responsible for so much of the good stuff in our life and they save lives and do amazing things, but we’re also slightly terrified by it because each generation has different things that they’re terrified of ... but it’s pretty consistently a theme.”
Daniel Radcliffe with director Paul McGuigan on the Victor Frankenstein set. Source: Warner Bros.
With a screenplay by the polarising Hollywood figure Max Landis – son of An American Werewolf In London’s John Landis – and directed by Paul McGuigan (Push, Wicker Park), Victor Frankenstein was released theatrically in the UK and US late 2015 with the studio’s hope that it could be the next big monster movie franchise (a la The Mummy).
The box-office returns saw another result, with the disappointing ticket sales replacing the movie’s intentions for a comma with a full stop.
Being released to the rest of the world on home entertainment this month, Radcliffe plays the sidekick to James McAvoy’s Dr Frankenstein in the big-budget Gothic retelling.
He gets to toy with the idea of making something new from something old as Igor, a character that has historically been played out again and again in the pantheon of pop culture horror.
Yet with this version, he sensed opportunity.
"... the most essential part of it is the argument about technology and science and what crosses a line."
“I think that Igor, what I really wanted to play about him, was that there was something in this version that was so earnest and sincere and sweet.
“Everything about his character made sense to me in that here is this person living this abject awful life and they get pulled out of that and given a sense of purpose and sense of status and a place in a world they never thought they’d have access to.
“You would develop this sense of insane loyalty to the person who had given you all that.
“Ultimately it is a film about the relationship between these two guys … “
It's not particularly surprising that Radcliffe would be drawn to the idea of reinvention, in both his acting roles and career.
After all, this is the same guy who went from playing the world's most famous wizard in the Harry Potter franchise to bravely performing naked on West End in the play Equus.
He seems consciously trying to avoid 'type' in his professional life, with no two projects being quite the same for the young star - perhaps his own attempt to find the new in a very, very old game.
