Radcliffe conjures brave new role as gay poet

In the course of the film, Ginsberg comes to embrace his homosexuality. Hall said he hopes "Harry Potter" fans can come to embrace Radcliffe in the role and "expand their definition of what a magic wand might be".

"Kill Your Darlings" director John Krokidas said Radcliffe hurled himself into the role and treated the nudity and gay love scenes as just another part of the job, with no qualms or anxiety.

"None! None! None!" said Krokidas, who is gay and so became Radcliffe's coach in same-sex love-making.

"Radcliffe simply asked, 'John, you're gay. How does this work?'" Krokidas said. "I'm not kidding. And so perhaps there was a little dry run-through — oh, she's going to kill me — with me and the director of photography Reed Morano.

"I might have done it on purpose to make everyone laugh, too, but I also wanted to make sure that we got it right. And other films that have depicted certain moments of sexuality like this, it doesn't happen that way. And at least for cinematic history, I wanted to get that moment right. But Dan watched, observed, found his own connection like he did any other scene and dove right into it."

"Kill Your Darlings" premiered Friday afternoon at Sundance's main theater, which is adjacent to a high school where classes were just letting out for the day. A group of teenage girls rushed from the school to the back of the theater, trying to determine where Radcliffe and his co-stars would be coming in and out.

Some stars grow to resent that sort of fan attention resulting from past roles, feeling it overshadows the work they're doing now. So far, Radcliffe seems to see nothing but good things coming out of "Harry Potter".

"There was a generation of people who maybe wouldn't have gone to see a production of 'Equus,' had I not been in it, that came to see 'Equus,'" Radcliffe said. "Even if they came for the wrong reasons, you know, we got them there, and they stayed, and they watched. And they stayed for the right reasons."

Being gay in China