Daniel Radcliffe sees ghosts in new film

And you thought Voldemort was scary.

Daniel Radcliffe is back battling supernatural specters, of a very different sort, in The Woman in Black.

A remake of a 1980s British TV miniseries, Woman in Black also marks the 22-year-old actors graduation from the Harry Potter [website] series and entry into adult roles.

Radcliffe plays a recently widowed father who travels to a remote village terrorized by a vengeful ghost. In a way I get the best of both worlds with this part because its challenging and different from Potter and also breaks me away from everyone seeing me in a schoolboy outfit for 10 years. Now theyre seeing me as a dad, which is great, Radcliffe said in a one-on-one interview at New Yorks Regency Hotel.

But equally, he continued, its not so different and weird that everyone will go, Oh, now hes trying to shock us into thinking hes somebody different.

After starring in two hit stage revivals that were far from Potter territory, Equus and the musical How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, Radcliffe didnt stray too far from his cinematic comfort zone.

Undoubtedly this is supernatural. Its horror. But its very difficult to draw any line between it and Potter. The difference between the ghosts on Potter and Woman in Black are as different as are the elves in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. We have Dobby and they have Orlando Bloom. We have ghosts that are a much more frightening proposition in Woman in Black.

Far from floundering after the Harry Potter series wrapped up, Radcliffe was prepared.

It was about finding the right script, and actually I read Woman in Black four hours after my last shot on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

As to why he chose it, Radcliffe explained, The thing my dad always said was, If its not on the page, it wont be on the screen. And it is all on the page. Everything.

I was getting scared reading it. Its hard for a script to actually do that to make you jump and send a chill down your spine, just by reading about these moments. Its a film thats really going to freak people out, I think.

(The Woman in Black opens Friday.)