Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is the executive producer for a movie featuring his stunt double. David Holmes was paralysed while practising a stunt for the penultimate Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I. Holmes working in a scene that involved an explosion, which left him paralysed from the chest down. Holmes, who had been Radcliffe's stunt double since 14, right from the first movie, had formed a bond with the actor.
David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived is described as a “coming-of-age story”, a Vulture report reads. Holmes is a trained gymnast. Holmes and Radcliffe, in 2020, began a podcast 'Cunning Stunts'. When Holmes met with the accident in 2009, Radcliffe hosted a charity auction to raise money for his medical bills. Radcliffe and fellow actor Tom Felton would visit Holmes in the hospital.
In a 2014 interview with The Mirror, Radcliffe talked about the bond he shared with Holmes and said, “And I would hate for people to just see me and Dave and go, ‘Oh, there’s Daniel Radcliffe with a person in a wheelchair’ because I would never, even for a moment, want them to assume that Dave was anything except for an incredibly important person in my life.”
The movie features behind-the-scenes footage of Holmes’s stunt work and interviews with Radcliffe, other close friends, family members and former crew. The movie is directed by Dan Hartley. The movie premiers on HBO and Max on November 15, at 9 p.m.
“I think there’s a myth around stuntmen that they are just superhuman in some way. When the public sees something really painful or horrible, they think it was a visual effect or that there’s some clever, safe way of doing it. Often that’s not the case,” Radcliffe told Variety about the podcast.
