Daniel Radcliffe on the sports documentary that made him cry ‘three times in 40 minutes’

‘Sports movies and particularly sports documentaries make me tear up,’ actor said

Daniel Radcliffe has admitted that he cried watching an unexpected Netflix documentary.

The Harry Potter star said that, while he rarely cries, he could recall the first film to make him tear up around his girlfriend of 10 years, actor Erin Darke.

“The first film that my girlfriend remembers me crying at – we’d been together for about a year and a half and she had never seen me cry in any context at that point because it’s not something that generally happens a lot – was when we watched a documentary called Undefeated about an American high school football team in Tennessee,” he told Deadline.

Released in 2011, the Academy Award-nominated documentary follows three young sports stars from underprivileged backgrounds in inner-city Memphis and the volunteer coach attempting to motivate them.

“I cried three times at three completely separate things in the last 40 minutes of the film,” Radcliffe said. “So, that’s a long way of saying sports movies and particularly sports documentaries make me tear up.”

Radcliffe can currently be seen in the biopic Weird, in which he plays comedy musician “Weird” Al Yankovic.

The former child star’s performance has been praised by critics (you can read The Independent’s review here), as well as Yankovic himself, who said that Radcliffe “absolutely nailed” the role.

Elsewhere in the Deadline interview, Radcliffe said that Weird had been the most fun he’d had while making a film.

“The diner fight scene on Weird was just awesome,” he said. “We only had four hours to shoot the whole thing and the stunt team were absolutely incredible.

“I got to jump in and do bits, and when you’re doing that kind of stuff and it’s chaos and you’re against the clock but it’s going really well, that’s really, really exciting.”

The 33-year-old said that Swiss Army Man, in which he’d played a zombie, had also been “incredibly fun” as he’d been able to work with Everything Everywhere All At Once directors “the Daniels” (Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan).