An only child, Radcliffe is very close to his casting agent mom and manager dad, and they've helped shape his career shrewdly. The proud parents watched their boy rack up some $15 million in salary last year, according to Forbes magazine, and they appear to be fine with the fact that he's not interested in further formal education. Radcliffe says he's done with school — a surpassing irony considering he's the world's most beloved student. ''You mention to somebody that you don't want to go to university, and they look at you like you're failing your kind,'' he says. ''I certainly don't think I'd enjoy it very much. I think I work much better educating myself.'' Radcliffe has become a passionate reader of great books, and lists a dozen favorites on danradcliffe.co.uk, a fan website that bills itself as ''the best online source for everything Dan.'' ''When I first met Dan, he used to talk about the World Wrestling Federation,'' says producer Heyman. ''Now he's reading F. Scott Fitzgerald and Émile Zola.''

Overcompensation for leaving academia behind? Maybe. But if Radcliffe will never prowl the grounds at Oxford or Cambridge, future actors may study what he pulled off with the Equus run as a master class in career advancement. It could have been a minefield. In the show, Radcliffe's character swears, smokes, strips, and simulates the blinding of six horses in a fit of misdirected sexual rage at being impotent. If Warner brass were freaked at what this might do to Radcliffe's image, they won't say so. ''We supported him in his desire to stretch as an artist,'' says Jeff Robinov, the studio's president of production. ''There wasn't any real anxiety about it. Not that we could have vetoed it, or would have vetoed it.''

For Emma Watson, who endured a pummeling in the British press recently for taking longer than her male costars to sign on to the final two Potter movies, Radcliffe's success in Equus is especially sweet. ''All those stuuuupid headlines,'' she says, her lilting voice rising with indignation. ''You know, like 'Potter Gets Naked.' As if Dan was getting off his kit to become some sort of pinup, or something trivial and stupid like that. He's obviously kicked them all in the b---s. It was really brave, and he pulled it off.'' So does this inspire Watson to redefine her image, too? ''I went for a couple of things this summer, but they didn't work out,'' she says. ''Which was a shame.'' Speaking for her young costars as well, Watson says she's ''really conscious'' that reaching escape velocity from the Potter series is critical right now: ''The next things we do will prove whether we're made for this business, and whether we really can act, as characters other than the ones we were cast for when we were so young.''

As for Radcliffe, he's heavily booked. This summer, he's shooting a TV movie called My Boy Jack — he plays Rudyard Kipling's son, who goes missing as a soldier in World War I — and promoting the September release of December Boys, an orphan coming-of-age drama he shot two years ago in Australia. After that? Well, he'll be looking for more stage or movie work in whatever downtime he has between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. He'll also be sharpening his wits against potentially ill-willed tabloid journalists, whom he senses circling now that he's turning 18, on July 23. ''What everybody would love to see,'' he says, ''is me having ditched school and then just going wild.'' He grins the sort of unalloyed grin you rarely see from poor, tormented Harry Potter these days. ''That's what I'm determined not to give them.''