Harry Potter Faces a Hanging

London's prestigious National Portrait Gallery now has a new edition to its impressive collection of paintings. Alongside the portraits of Alan Rickman and Oscar winner Jeremy Irons will hang one of Daniel Radcliffe, better known as Harry Potter, making him the youngest non-royal to have an individual portrait displayed in the permanent collection.

Radcliffe, now 16, was only 14 when he posed for artist Stuart Pearson Wright while on a break from filming Potter. "It was quite a challenge," Wright told British paper The Guardian. "As people's faces get older they get blighted by cynicism and evidence of broken hearts and all the things that go wrong in life… It's not that Daniel lacked character, it was just that he had an extreme openness and lack of cynicism - and it was difficult to know what to do with that."

The actor, who said he found the experience fascinating, had three sittings at Pearson Wright's studio to complete the portrait. "I love it," Radcliffe told BBC News. "Until recently, I'd seen a peek of it in the catalogue but not actually seen the real thing. It was strange seeing myself as I was two years ago, not as I am now. If you look at each individual part of my face they look exactly like part of my face. Together it's surreal."