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“Harry Potter bares all in Equus” was the headline that made the national newspapers in the UK when Daniel Radcliffe performed in Equus in the London’s West End. Radcliffe caused quite a storm when he played the psychologically disturbedprotagonist of the play. Not for any of the intense and emotionally-wrought moments in the play, however, but because he had to strip off for one of the scenes. Very much a departure from the cheeky-looking bespectacled young wizard for whom we all know and love Radcliffe, his character eventually attacks horses with a scythe after he is seduced into making love with a young female stable hand. The film version of the play, which starred Richard Burton and Peter Firth, showed in fairly graphic detail the mutilation of the horses (although it’s difficult to imaginethe stage play being able to re-create the same level of physical violence). Not that it had to, though, because, by all accounts, there was enough drama when Radcliffe went naked on stage.

This is perhaps a classic example of typecasting and how difficult an actor sometimes finds it to play characters other than the one he’s found fame with. It was in some ways a rites of passage moment for Radcliffe, and he handled it very well. When interviewed, he brushed off the nudity as just something that was part of the play and not a huge deal. But that didn’t stop women wanting a seat near the front to see just how well Harry Potter had turned out.

Still, a headline such as “Harry Potter Bares All in West End” makes good copy. When Radcliffe played Rudyard Kipling’s son in a TV drama, it did not seem to occupy as many inches in the newspapers (there’s a gag in there somewhere, I know there is…). The papers were more interested in how a screen sex symbol such as Kim Cattrell managed to successfully take on the role of Kipling’s dour, stoical and, most interestingly of all, brown-haired wife.

But it’s good to see actors breaking out of the mould and trying new roles. And if those roles are far removed from the characters they have played to date then all the better. Radcliffe’s problem was perhaps that he played a character quintessentially English (Harry Potter went to boarding school remember), and everyone knows what the British are like when it comes to stripping off. If he had dressed up as a woman then there probably would not have been so much fuss.

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