Daniel Radcliffe Admits Being Drunk While On 'Harry Potter' Set

Sure, Daniel Radcliffe adamently maintains that he never cut loose and started Happy Hour while on a "Harry Potter" set.

He didn't even go that far before August 2010, when he's candidly admitted he realized he'd developed a drinking problem and bid the sauce "farewell."

That doesn't mean that the cameras never rolled on one inebriated boy-wizard of destiny.

While stumping for "The Woman In Black," which hit theaters everywhere Feb. 3, Radcliffe conceded to Heat Magazine that for a while there, he was felled by the same excesses that rocked many a young star, some of whom never regained their feet fully. He claims that he could watch any "Potter" installment before his August 2010 parting with the bottle and pinpoint exact scenes when he was truly checked-out, or as he put it, "gone, dead behind the eyes."

To his credit, none of us ever could've guessed, had he never come clean.Hiding that abuse might've well been the performance of his lifetime. He told ShortList recently that around the same time he realized what a fine line he was watching, he was also realizing how costly running into the wrong person at exactly the wrong time could be.

"The drinking was unhealthy and damaging to my body and my social life," Radcliffe admitted. "That's beyond question. I was living in constant fear of who I'd meet, what I might have said to them, what I might have done with them, so I'd stay in my apartment for days and drink alone. I was a recluse at 20.

"It was pathetic - it wasn't me," Radcliffe continued. "I'm a fun, polite person and it turned me into a rude bore. For a long time people were saying to me, 'We think you have a problem' but in the end I had to come to the realization myself."

Well, not entirely by himself.

He also admits that his tipping point may have come when he had a blacked-out conversation - not necessarily an atypical one for that time, Radcliffe claims - with co-star and respected thespian Gary Oldman, who urged that he get himself on the mend. "You can't keep doing this. You've got too much to lose," he said Oldman told him.

Oldman later Radcliffe quite the tribute when Entertainment Weekly named Radcliffe the publication and website's 2011 Entertainer Of The Year following his franchise-concluding turn in "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2" - a tribute which never once hinted at Radcliffe's private struggles.