Early Life and Education
Radcliffe was born on 23 July 1989 in West London, England, the only child of Alan George Radcliffe, a literary agent, and Marcia Jeannine Gresham (née Marcia Gresham Jacobson), a casting agent who was involved in several films for the BBC, including The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Walk Away And I Stumble. Radcliffe's father, originally from Northern Ireland, is Protestant. Radcliffe's mother is Jewish, and her family had come from South Africa, Poland, and Russia (she was born in South Africa and raised in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex). He was raised without religion. Radcliffe first expressed a desire to act at the age of five, and in December 1999, aged ten, he made his acting debut in the BBC One's televised two-part adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield, portraying the title character as a young boy.
Radcliffe was educated at two independent schools for boys: at Sussex House School, a day school in Cadogan Square in Chelsea in London, followed by the City of London School, a day school on the North Bank of the River Thames in London's financial district, known as the City of London.
Following the release of the first Harry Potter movie, attending school became hard for Radcliffe, with some fellow pupils becoming hostile. Radcliffe said it was people just trying to "have a crack at the kid that plays Harry Potter" rather than jealousy. As his acting career began to consume his schedule, Radcliffe continued his education through on-set tutors. He admitted he was not very good at school, considered it useless, and found the work to be "really, really difficult"; however, he did achieve A grades in the three A-levels that he sat in 2006, but then decided to take a break from education and did not go to college or university. Part of the reason was that he already knew he wanted to act and write, and that it would be difficult to have a normal college experience. "The paparazzi, they’d love it," he told Details magazine in 2007. "If there were any parties going on, they’d be tipped off as to where they were".
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