Throughout his career, Daniel Radcliffe has appeared in a wide range of movies, from a blockbuster franchise about a boy wizard to an existential drama about a farting corpse, with varying success. For his acclaimed roles in both big-budget tentpole movies and smaller indie fare, Radcliffe has received accolades ranging from Critics’ Choice Awards to MTV Movie Awards. Radcliffe successfully made the leap from child actor to bonafide movie star, and he's one of the only actors to successfully break free from the iconic blockbuster franchise role that made them famous.
By playing wildly subversive roles like a gun-toting gamer in Guns Akimbo, a horned murder suspect in Horns, and a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man, Radcliffe post-Harry Potter career has been a success, as he has become a renowned performer in his own right. He can switch seamlessly between the wackiest of comedies and the darkest of dramas, with room for action movies, horror movies, sci-fi movies, and fantasy movies in between. Some of Radcliffe’s movies are modern classics, like What If, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and the Harry Potter series, while others have been panned by critics and audiences, like Victor Frankenstein and Playmobil: The Movie.
18 Playmobil: The Movie (2019)
Radcliffe appears as secret agent Rex Dasher alongside Anya Taylor-Joy, Jim Gaffigan, and Kenan Thompson in the star-studded voice cast of Playmobil: The Movie. The film revolves around two siblings who get transported to a Playmobil world. With a weak IMDb rating of 4.9 and an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score of 18%, Playmobil: The Movie was an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the lightning-in-a-bottle success of The Lego Movie.
17 Beast Of Burden (2018)
Beast of Burden centers around Sean Haggerty’s last day as a drug smuggler. The movie puts a spotlight on Radcliffe as Sean sits in the cockpit of his plane, taking cocaine across the U.S. border. Unfortunately, Beast of Burden squanders its “Locke in the sky” premise with an unfocused script.
16 Victor Frankenstein (2015)
Radcliffe played Igor alongside James McAvoy’s mad scientist in Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein is an uninspired adaptation of the Mary Shelley classic that sets out to revitalize the story with a modern style but fails to capture what makes it so profound and timeless.
15 Now You See Me 2 (2016)
Jesse Eisenberg’s magician heist crew reassembled for Now You See Me 2, in which they take on Walter Mabry, a tech tycoon played by Radcliffe. The sequel was a box office hit, but it was panned by critics. Now You See Me 2 is even more far-fetched than its predecessor, but Radcliffe makes for a great villain.
14 December Boys (2007)
Radcliffe played his first starring role outside the Harry Potter franchise in the coming-of-age drama December Boys, about four orphans, including Radcliffe's Maps, competing to be adopted. Sadly, the movie’s stunning location photography across the outback of Australia is wasted on a thinly developed script.
13 Horns (2013)
Radcliffe plays a young man named Ig who wakes up with horns on his head after being accused of murdering his girlfriend in Horns. Horns adapts the story from Joe Hill’s novel of the same name but misses its subtlety. The movie is a lot of morbid fun, but it’s a jumbled mix of horror-comedy and on-the-nose religious satire.
12 Guns Akimbo (2019)
In the dystopian action thriller Guns Akimbo, Radcliffe plays an online troll who has handguns bolted to his hands and is forced to take part in a live-streamed deathmatch. The movie divided critics with a near-50/50 split, as indicated by its 51% Rotten Tomatoes score. Guns Akimbo sets itself up as a great satirical take on society’s obsession with violence, and it’s full of thrilling, high-octane action sequences. However, it’s let down by uneven pacing and the lack of a clear message.
11 Jungle (2017)
Starring Radcliffe as Israeli adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg, Jungle is a harrowing survival thriller set deep in the Amazon rainforest. Whereas most survival movies focus on external conflicts, Jungle is just as interested in the psychology of being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
10 The Tailor Of Panama (2001)
Before landing the role of Harry Potter, Radcliffe made his film debut as the young Mark Pendel in The Tailor of Panama, about a convict-turned-tailor (Geoffrey Rush) who is talked into spying on the Panamanian government by a crooked MI6 agent (Pierce Brosnan). With 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.1 on IMDb, The Tailor of Panama is a tense espionage thriller from the mind of spy novelist John le Carré, the master of the genre.
9 Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Radcliffe played a young Allen Ginsberg opposite Dane DeHaan’s Lucien Carr, Jack Huston’s Jack Kerouac, and Ben Foster’s William S. Burroughs in Kill Your Darlings. Kill Your Darlings is a nuanced portrayal of the early days of the Beat generation that resists the temptation to romanticize its key figures.
