‘Harry Potter’ stirs storm with racy pics

updated 9:50 a.m. ET Feb. 1, 2007

NEW YORK - “Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe, who strips for his new role in London’s West End revival of the play “Equus,” has ignited a bit of a media firestorm by posing for racy promotional photos for the production.

The Tony-Award-winning drama tells the story of a stable-hand who has an erotic fixation with horses. In one photo, Radcliffe, 17, dares to bare it all alongside a white horse; in another, he is pictured with a naked Joanna Christie, the actress who portrays his girlfriend.

“Equus,” directed by Thea Sharrock, opens at London’s Gielgud Theater on Feb. 27. Tony Award-winning actor Richard Griffiths plays a psychiatrist who treats Radcliffe’s character.

“Part of me wants to shake up people’s perception of me, just shove me in a blender,” Radcliffe said in a recent interview with Newsweek magazine.

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“It’s a really challenging play, and if I can pull it off — we don’t know if I can yet — I hope people will stop and think, ‘Maybe he can do something other than Harry,”’ he said.

Radcliffe, who was discovered seven years ago in the audience of a London theater, reprises his role as the bespectacled boy wizard in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” slated for release July 13.

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