Gossip Guy of the Week: Daniel Radcliffe

GRANTED, playing J. Pierrepont Finch, the ambitious young man who reads a self-help book and quickly rises from window washer to C.E.O., is a winning proposition. It worked out well for Robert Morse in 1961, and Matthew Broderick was adorable in 1995. But it takes a lot of star power and stage savvy to pull it off, and Daniel Radcliffe, who had never done a stage musical before (he was too busy simultaneously growing up and playing a certain child wizard), is doing it right now. Go and just try not to smile from ear to ear when he and his co-stars burst into "Brotherhood of Man."

CURRENT GIG Starring in the exhilarating revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and probably not giving a damn that he (inexplicably) wasn't nominated for a Tony Award.

WHAT THE TIMES THOUGHT Well, never mind. But The New Yorker said: "Inspired. . . .Every nanosecond of this well-cast production is eloquent. . . . Radcliffe throws every ounce of his being into the show." ("Tooth and Claw")

AGE 21.

BORN AND RAISED London.

ALMA MATER Hogwarts. (Really, when has he had time to go to university?)

AVAILABILITY Single. Linked with Olive Uniacke, described as a wild and crazy British society type.

BEST KNOWN AS Do you really have to ask? That Harry Potter guy. The final film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," opens this summer.

BROADWAY DEBUT "Equus" (2008). Somehow he made it the troubled teenage boy's story, rather than the psychiatrist's, but mostly people just talked about his nude scene.

THOUGHTS ON FUTURE ROLES "I maintain that I look good with eye makeup," he told the London newspaper The Guardian ("Dan the Man") in 2009. "And I'm not going to be an emo kid, so the only other option is drag queen."

"How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," by Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, directed by Rob Ashford, Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200, howtosucceedbroadway.com. Opening night: March 27, 2011.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll to read about Edie Falco's latest amazing performance, in the revival of "The House of Blue Leaves." Then search to read about theater standouts of the last season and a half, from Brandon Victor Dixon in "The Scottsboro Boys" to Norbert Leo Butz in "Catch Me if You Can" and Colin Donnell in "Anything Goes." With the likes of Al Pacino, Liza Minnelli, James Franco, Nicole Kidman, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Cherry Jones and five different "Spider-Man" people in between.