David Copperfield, as a boy Daniel Radcliffe For 10-year-old Daniel Radcliffe, who portrays the young David Copperfield, on-set entertainment during the production was never in short supply. "Bob Hoskins taught me loads of rude rhymes, and tried to make me laugh. Ian McKellen was really cool. Somebody said he's doing the X-Men movie, which is great. I liked working with Pauline Quirke, too." Hanging around on-set for hours posed no problem for Daniel, as members of the crew kept him occupied. His chaperone, or his mother Marcia, was always there with him. Marcia confides that he's a changed boy. "He can really focus on one thing now," she says. "His short-term memory has improved, I think. He can now concentrate on a scene completely. It was difficult to start with, separating the acting from what was going on around him. It was all so exciting, and he's so full of energy. But now he can be fooling around one minute, and switch into real concentration for a scene." Radcliffe followed his debut acting performance in David Copperfield with the feature film The Tailor of Panama. He landed the role of a lifetime, Harry Potter in the long-awaited film of the same name, largely based on his appearance in David Copperfield.