When Ben Radcliffe was seven, he got the role that would permanently seal his love of performing: an unnamed orphan in the West End production of Oliver Twist. Twenty years later, he’s acted alongside Austin Butler and Callum Turner, Damian Lewis and John Travolta—but Radcliffe still describes the year he was in Oliver Twist as “one of the best years of my life.” (Not all roles would be quite so enriching—just after Oliver Twist, he got his first on-screen part in a children’s show for the British morning channel CITV: “I played some kid who was obsessed with snails,” he recalls.)
Growing up in Leeds, in northern England, Radcliffe and his sister never knew a life without the arts. Their mother, a former professional dancer, used to push them in a stroller around the sets of the British soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street. By the time they could walk, she had them enrolled in acting, dancing, and singing classes, hoping to encourage an interest in performing. It worked.
