You Need To See Daniel Radcliffe's Unconventional Fantasy Movie Streaming On Netflix

If you're only familiar with Daniel Radcliffe because he headlined the Harry Potter movie franchise as the titular Boy Who Lived throughout his late childhood and teenage years, I've got great news for you. There's a very weird, very fun, and very worthwhile Radcliffe movie streaming on Netflix that you should check out, if for no other reason than you can see how audacious and ambitious Radcliffe has become as an actor after turning in his wand and lightning-bolt scar.

In the 2016 A24 movie "Swiss Army Man" (which is written and directed by future "Everything Everywhere All at Once" visionaries Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, known casually as the "Daniels"), Paul Dano plays Hank Thompson, a guy stranded on a remote and apparently deserted island for reasons we don't immediately learn. Just as his desperation gets dire, he discovers a bloated, gassy corpse he names Manny, and yes, that corpse is played by Radcliffe himself. Through a series of hilariously grotesque experiments, Hank discovers that parts of Manny's body can be used as compasses and Manny himself can serve as a makeshift boat thanks to all those helpful farts. Manny also sort of comes back to life and starts speaking, leading to some seriously strange complications when the two actually do manage to make their way back, slowly but surely, into civilization as a whole.

I'm not going to spoil all of the movie's wonderfully weird twists and turns here, but trust me: "Swiss Army Man" is absolutely wild in the best way, and it certainly explains how and why the Daniels managed to make something as bizarre and delightful as "Everything Everywhere All at Once." What's more, it's a truly important part of Radcliffe's post-Potter evolution into what I like to call a "weird little guy."

Wait, what is a "weird little guy?" A "weird little guy" need not be literally small, but he needs to be able to transform into weird little guys for roles as needed. For example, Nicholas Hoult is a phenomenal "weird little guy" in stuff like "The Menu" or the underrated TV series "The Great," while Robert Pattinson qualifies as a "weird little guy" thanks to his penchant for strange accents. And despite being enormously tall, we can safely call Alexander Skarsgård a "weird little guy" at this point. Again, it's not the stature, but the state of mind ... and if you're not already familiar with this term popularized by the internet, you'll know a "weird little guy" when you see them.

Daniel Radcliffe is, it's true, famously diminutive, but he's also an incredible "weird little guy." Ever since he stopped playing Harry Potter, Radcliffe has, it seems, been hellbent on ensuring that he's not tied to that role for the remainder of his career, and to appropriate some British slang, he's done a bang-up job. In "Horns," he plays a man wrongly accused of killing his girlfriend who, while trying to prove his innocence, inexplicably sprouts those titular horns. In "Now You See Me 2," he's a sniveling, sneaky little villain, and he does the same thing to better effect in "The Lost City." Then, of course, there's "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story," his purposefully inaccurate "Weird" Al Yankovic biopic where he plays a heightened, wild version of Yankovic (now his real-life buddy) who sleeps with Madonna and is arrested for public lewdness. Radcliffe is flexing his weirdo muscles, and he shows no signs of stopping.

Outside of his flourishing film career, Daniel Radcliffe has done quite a bit of stage work. After making his mark in daring projects like "Equus" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," he won his first Tony Award for a Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along. For the most part, though, television hasn't been a big part of his oeuvre aside from the genuinely wonderful anthology series "Miracle Workers" (where he plays a series of wonderful "weird little guys"), but as of 2026, Radcliffe is headlining one of the best comedy shows currently airing — actually, I'll say it's the best network comedy not named "Abbott Elementary."

I don't know who figured out that Radcliffe and "30 Rock" gem Tracy Morgan would be a match made in heaven, but I want to give that person a hug and a gift basket. In "The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins," Morgan plays the titular Reggie, a disgraced former NFL star who got banned from the league for betting on himself as a form of super-illegal encouragement, and Radcliffe plays Arthur Tobin, an Oscar-winning documentarian who faced his own public shaming when he had a meltdown on the set of a fictional superhero movie that went viral. Whether he's enjoying TV marathons alongside Reggie or we're watching his breakdown over a series of green screens and tennis balls, Radcliffe's Arthur is, truly, the perfect role for him, incorporating his wry sense of humor and letting him be an abject dork at the same time. Definitely check out "Swiss Army Man" on Netflix, but then, you should explore the rest of Radcliffe's "weird little guy" work, too. It's all pretty great.