In an interview in The Daily Beast, Kevin Sessums talks to Daniel Radcliffe about Barack Obama, Prince Harry’s racist video, the poet John Keats, boarding schools, and performing in musicals.

Radcliffe also says he relishes the attention he gets from gay men: “…for a lot of straight guys—and I know I’m guilty of it sometimes—when you know a gay guy has a crush on you it is the most flattering thing.”

Admitting to the political incorrectness of the term, Sessums asks Radcliffe, if, like many straight actors, he’s a “fag hag” (actually, I think the proper term is stag hag or fag stag, or perhaps in Radcliffe’s case, stallion hag).

Says Radcliffe: “Oh, yeah. I know I definitely caught it. Absolutely. My mom was a casting director and my dad was a literary agent and I was surrounded by gay men from a very young age. And I was the only boy in my class at school who had that kind of relationship with gay men. Most of my friends had parents who had proper jobs in banks and law firms so none of them had been exposed to homosexuality in the way I had—as a normal course of things. So they had a rather different attitude toward it than I.”

They also discuss Radcliffe’s Brit rival for the hearts of movie fans, Twilight‘s Robert Pattinson.

Says Radcliffe: “I don’t have his number, so haven’t spoken to him. But I can safely say that his insisting that girls would choose me over him that they would not. That they do not. He is the much prettier and can be much more charming. And he can do that thing of being sultry and sexy…I don’t know how to be sexy. Rob can just sort of stand there and look at something and start to smolder. And I just can’t do that. I’m a natural fidget.”

Sessums’ sequel to his bestselling memoir Mississippi Sissy, was just sold to St. Martin’s Press. I Left it on the Mountain is set for publication in 2010. Sessums writes theatre reviews for Towleroad.

Dirty Harry [the daily beast]

Watch the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, AFTER THE JUMP…