He has done over a week of non-stop publicity promotion for December Boys in five cities across two continents, and that includes about five hours of interviews on the day of the Sydney premiere (hosted by Hoyts, The Entertainment Quarter), yet when he arrives, he doesn’t walk into the room – he bounds in with a bolt of energy. Shaking hands eagerly, he tells the story of a cricket ball he has been carrying around with him during the promotional tour.

‘Dan’ as he likes to be known explains that during interviews he’ll have the ball under his foot, and if he starts getting questions that bother him in any way, having the ball under him stops his leg from shaking with nervous energy, and – as he says – stops the urge to yell “you’re humiliating us both with a questions like that!” to all the interviewers.

Joshua Brandon joined Radcliffe and December Boys director Rod Hardy for a round-table interview in Sydney.

Is there a big difference in promoting a film overseas to when you do it here in Australia?

RH: It’s just like this.

DR: No one asks about the accent in America. It’s only here.

RH: That’s true. People’s attitudes are perhaps a little bit different. We Australians can be really particular about the accent thing when people try it. I mean everyone remembers Meryl Streep with the “dingo took my baybee.”

DR: I’ve not seen that movie. Is it not a good accent?

RH: Not really, no.

DR: Oh, well now I’ve got to say – someone turned to me earlier and said, ‘Your accent is so much better than Meryl Streep’. And I thought ‘oh, well that’s a good compliment’. Could have been a little bit backhanded.

Well if Meryl Streep can’t master the accent, that shows you how hard it is.

RH: That’s true, it’s really true.

But it must be good for you talking about this film given how long you’ve been involved with it.

RH: It’s always good to talk about something you love. And I’ve loved this for ten years. Jay Sanders, the producer, introduced me to it ten years ago but it was not in the form it was now. It was a story from a novel which is about fifty years old and there were a couple of screenplays. They were all trying to be true to the book in a fashion, and without being disrespectful to the book – because Michael Noonan is no longer with us – I mean it’s a terrific read, and kids that are getting hold of it now are writing on the internet that they’re enjoying reading the book, but I wanted to make something more ‘coming of age’.

And I wanted to make something that would fit into the 2000s, rather than something that was set in the 50s (just) because it was made in the 50s.

Even though it’s not set in the 2000s.

RH: No, it’s not, but it’s attitudes – certain things. You wouldn’t talk about sex, or show it in a movie in the 50s: those kinds of things that we take for granted.

So Rod, you’ve had a lot of investment in this film, but Daniel, what was it that attracted you to the film – why an Australian film?

RH: That is a question that’s only been asked in Australia. I don’t know why that is but everyone in Australia seems to think it’s quite unlikely that I’d do a film in Australia. But for me it just so happened that it was Australian – I wasn’t specifically looking for an Australian film but this was just far and away the best script I’d read. And so it was just that. I’d go anywhere; it doesn’t really make a difference where it comes from.

I think part of the reason some people ask that question is it’s a very Australian movie. Are you going to promote it overseas in any particular way?

RH: No, it’s done by different people in their own way and each country has its own way of promoting it. I’m sure the title’s going to be changed in certain countries – in fact I know it is. In Portugal it’s called The Summer for All Time. So what they do is just work towards what the local market feels. And so it’ll become many things.

Did you send the script to Daniel?

RH: His agent and I had been discussing other things and she had the screenplay and had read it and said how much she really enjoyed the screenplay, but not right up front was it ‘Shall we give it to Daniel’? And I never thought of asking – in fact I didn’t even know that Daniel was with this particular agent. It was sometime down the track and we were starting to have a relationship by telephone – business-wise, of course – and suddenly one day she said ‘What would you think about Daniel Radcliffe’? And I said ‘what for? what would he do?’ And she said, ‘Well, be in your film. So I was a bit uncertain that that would be a reality, I mean I’ve worked in the United States a lot: I lived there for eighteen years and I know the way the business operates, but in Australia we have budgets that are restricted, we have a whole bunch of things.

But more importantly, people like Daniel have schedules that are really tight and trying to fit it in with that – I didn’t know if it was ever going to work. And more importantly I wanted to check Daniel out, as he’d want to check me out. He was taking the step of coming to Australia to work with a bunch of people he didn’t know based on a screenplay and people don’t’ do that. You’ve got to see the players involved, and I certainly wanted to find out what Daniel’s attitude would be to the material, and I do that with every actor I work with; it wasn’t just because it was Daniel.

DR: And I also totally knew that Rod would need to figure out what I was about because he had nothing to go on other than what he’d seen in Harry Potter. It was a big risk for him as well as me.

RH: The fact that Daniel Radcliffe, rather than Harry Potter… Harry Potter will be around for sometime to come and Daniel’s reputation is growing as an actor with a bunch of other people, so that’s what’s going to be a plus for me.

So you weren’t just automatically going to give him the job as soon as he got off the plane saying ‘Okay, you’re in’.

RH: Well, truth be known, if that had happened, and I didn’t give him the job, I think the producers would be looking for another director. I know the reality of it! But of course I was going to love him.

Did that make your job difficult as a director?

RH: Not at all.

DR: It would have done if we had really hated each other.

RH: Yeah, and we spent a couple of hours together the first time in London and it seemed to work. And the interesting thing was Daniel was there trying to show me who he was; he knew there was a period of time and he was very honest and open about a number of things – and I mean very honest. Things about him; and then I realised there was something going on here that would be good for this character and this story.

Dan, Hoyts ran an online competition in which people were asked to submit questions to you about the film, and the two winners would have theirs asked during the interview:

Deepti Prakash of Emerton, NSW, wanted to know how you prepared for playing the role of an orphan: did you visit an orphanage, spend some time with the kids?

DR: Unfortunately, Rod was contacted by a guy who had grown up in a Catholic orphanage, and he came in and talked to the other boys; unfortunately I wasn’t actually there for that but I heard a great deal of it through Rod and through the other boys. But in terms of my preparation for playing Maps, it was mainly about – when you look at any character you have to find out what their fundamental drives are, and they build around that. I think Maps’ fundamental drive is he needs to be needed, he needs someone to need him – not necessarily love him – but the boys rely on him and it gives him a purpose. I think if you have that in mind it gives you a starting point which you can go on.

But I did other things, like I made Rod a couple of CDs that I felt was relevant or pertinent to Maps in some way, and also –

RH: Very dark. Very dark lyrics.

DR: Troubled guitar-wielding, Eliot Smith, Willy Mason, and the like. And also I wrote an essay on Maps’ backstory, which I don’t think you [Rod] ever saw, or you ever read it.

RH: I did.

DR: Oh good.

RH: I gave you a seven out of ten. I want to talk to you about the grammar.

DR: Ooh, don’t pick me up on my grammar – it’s the one thing I pride myself on. So that was a big thing for me, even if it has no bearing on what you see in the movie, that backstory is essential.

Joy Emmet of Croydon, Victoria, wanted to know: what impact, if any, did playing the character of Maps have on your feelings towards your own family?

DR: There’s a Croydon in Australia?

RH: Oh yeah.

Everything you’ve got over there, we’ve got a crappier version of here. We don’t have a Saffron-Waldon…

DR: You don’t need one! I don’t know if it affected the relationship I have with my family… it affected my relationship with the word ‘family’. As in it gave me a new understanding of what it meant. If this film has a theme it’s that family is not necessarily blood relations, and it’s whoever you love and trust. They become your family, no matter if you’re actually related to them or not.

Rod, do you think the other young actors in the film, including Theresa Palmer and the young boys – audiences will notice them while Daniel is on screen? He’s obviously the person everyone knows out there, do you think their performances will shine through?

RH: Egotistically I’ll say if I’ve done my job properly, then they will because the story will just – Mark Rosenberg did his job properly, he wrote a good screenplay, and my job is to be the storyteller and bring it onto the screen. If I did that, then I think there’s no question about it. I believe we’ve done that because audiences that have seen it so far and have been young fans of Daniel and of Harry Potter say that – look, as soon as you see he’s got hairy legs you forget he’s Harry Potter.

DR: In terms of doing the right job, my job as an actor in this film is to do my best when I’m out there and fade into the background when I’m not driving the story forward, and that’s what all the actors do.

RH: And because his character at the beginning didn’t say very much, it was very interesting watching Daniel Radcliffe as an actor, because if you want to be a Daniel Radcliffe-Harry Potter watcher, your attention goes to him, but what Daniel delivered was – when he had no dialogue, you could tell there was something turning over in him constantly, and that’s what, to me, a good actor can do: they can get your attention, and you can really understand what they’re thinking.

I was really excited to see Theresa Palmer in it, as I thought she was excellent in 2:37. How did you cast her? Did you see her performance or was it an audition?

RH: It was an audition done by my casting agent who went to Adelaide. There’s not a huge pool out there, most actors come to Sydney or Melbourne if they want to get their careers moving – and that’s nothing against Adelaide but that’s the way it happens.

DR: Anybody from Adelaide?

RH: I love it though! But she went there and she called me and said, ‘I’ve got this tape, you’ve got to see this girl’ and so I said ‘I’m in Melbourne, send it to me’. I looked at it and I said ‘book her’. Then she said ‘It’s not that simple, you’ve got to audition her’ and I said, ‘I don’t have to’. I could see in that tape that there was something very special, and then I finally got convinced to fly over to Adelaide, which I did, and then we sat down – I didn’t audition her – we sat down for two hours, and I found her charming and wonderful and beautiful. I mean as a male, she has the most stunning chemistry that draws you to her in an animal way. ‘Hold me down’, but she’s just fantastic.

DR: I actually think Theresa does have the most amazing quality on and off screen. She has a real youthfulness, which is not immaturity or naivety, but it’s just a real warmth and something joyous about her, which is amazing. And I actually think she’s probably unfortunate to be as beautiful as she is because she’s so talented, but because she’s so beautiful people always talk about the talent second.

RH: You saw 2:37 didn’t you?

DR: Oh yeah. She makes the movie for me.

RH: She’s a chameleon to me, too.

DR: She’s not afraid to make herself ugly.

RH: No, not at all.

DR: It just so happens in this film she’s playing someone gorgeous.

RH: She is to me like a Charlize Theron: she has that beauty about her but at the same time she can take roles and—

DR: -- I did get asked today by one journalist, ‘What was it like kissing Abbie Cornish?’

It would have been great if you’d had an answer for them – ‘oh, well when I kissed Abbie Cornish…’

DR: Yeah, well I made some sort of joke about ‘Oh no, that home movie got out!’

You guys have done a week worth of non-stop publicity for this film, the one thing I wanted to ask – and the answer could very well be no – but is there anything you guys wanted to talk about, or any question you wish you’d been asked, but no one ever said, ‘Oh by the way, what did you think of this?’

RH: No.

DR: Ask me whose idea it was for the boys on first seeing the water to run into the sea.

Whose idea was it on first seeing the water for the boys to run into the sea?

DR: It was head of the props department, Zlatko, who was brilliant because he turned round to me and said, ‘cause we’d been there, and it’s the first time we’d seen the sea, and none of us had thought that the first thing we’d do is run in, and Zlatko said to me, and said, really laid back, ‘Should you boys not be like running into the water or something?’ Yes! Of course!

DECEMBER BOYS (PG) IN CINEMAS NOW!