Daniel Radcliffe Once Signed An Autograph "I Am Not Elijah Wood"

Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood are constantly mistaken for each other, and the two actors spoke about this as part of Empire Magazine's joint interview with them celebrating their movie franchises turning 20 this year.

In the interview, Wood asks Radcliffe how often he is mistaken for him, and Radcliffe replies, "Oh, like hundreds of times." Wood replies that fans often also get him mixed up with Radcliffe, and this is still happening today.

Radcliffe then asks Wood when these cases of mistaken identity began, because he felt good about getting mistaken for Wood at first. It made him feel important to be mistaken for an older person. But Radcliffe asked Wood if he was annoyed that the Lord of the Rings actor would be mistaken for someone younger.

"It's become so ubiquitous in my life that it's difficult to recognize the inception point," he said. "But if I had been mistaken for you in 2001 or 2002, that would have seemed strange because you're quite a lot younger than me. So it must have been after the last Lord of the Rings movie came out, as you were getting older. As those movies became part of the zeitgeist, the two of us just got linked somehow."

Radcliffe said it's because they are both short, pale, blue-eyed, and brown-haired. "I would say that we don't actually look alike, but the idea of us is exactly the same," he said. Wood agreed.

Radcliffe also shared a funny story about an occasion where he was mistaken for Wood, but because of a language barrier, he signed an autograph anyway--with the words, "I am not Elijah Wood."

"I was once on a red carpet in Japan and a photo of you [Wood] was thrust at me. My first instinct was to say, 'Oh, I'm not ... So I can't ...' but I thought the language barrier would be too much," Radcliffe said. "So the quickest way to deal with it was just to write, 'I am not Elijah Wood, [signed] Daniel Radcliffe,' and then hope somebody translated that for him later."

Wood shared his own amazing story about being mistaken for Radcliffe, saying he has been praised on a number of occasions for his role in the stage play Equus, even though it was Radcliffe in the play, not Wood.

"I have on multiple occasions been applauded for my bravery on stage in Equus [laughs]. Once i was in an elevator in Vancouver and it was just me and this other person, and I could feel them looking at me intently. Just before the doors opened into the lobby, he finally got up the courage, pointed at me and said, 'Harry Potter!' I said, 'No!' and I walked away."

Radcliffe laughed about this story and shared one more of this own. "We are linked enough, and the films are big enough in people's minds that when people say to me, 'Lord of the Rings!' I literally just say, "Nope. The other one.""

Wood previously talked to Conan O'Brien about how he and Radcliffe are often mistaken for one another--you can check out the great clip above. Wood said he was lined up to physically fight Radcliffe for a promotional event but he put an end to it because he didn't want the culmination of this situation and their friendship to be a physical brawl.

Go to Empire's website to order the April 2021 issue.