Daniel Radcliffe hated his performance in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

In a frank interview with the 'Observer' newspaper, Daniel Radcliffe has confessed he has had "things I regard as failures when I look at certain performances".

Pressed to name the roles, he admits: "The sixth Harry Potter film - I don't like my performance in that film at all. There's stuff in 'The Woman in Black': I'm really glad it did well but I look at that film and there were probably six weeks between finishing Potter and starting that, so I hear the same voice and I see a very similar style of acting."

[JK Rowling invented Quidditch to "infuriate" men]

As an actor, his mantra is "Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better".

"There is still in many, many people's minds the notion that I'll never be able to escape Harry Potter. So my drive is to prove to people that I'm not a one-trick pony, basically."

In the interview, to promote his next theatre role - playing Billy "the cripple" - in the West End production of 'The Cripple of Inishmaan', he reveals he enjoys stage violence. "I was lucky enough to spend a lot of my lunchtimes as a child choreographing fight scenes on Potter. So I'm quite good at it: the stunt department always said that I bounce."

He adds he wants to get a tattoo of the song lyric "Bravery Already Exists" - a tribute to his love of band British Sea Power. "I want to get a tattoo on my forearm, something on my chest and maybe something on my back."

He can't do it yet because of filming so many nude scenes - including  the gay sex scene in 'Kill Your Darlings', a skinny dipping scene in 'The F Word' and a straight sex scene in 'Horns'.

[Jason Isaacs: "My wealthy groupies"]

"In a way it's bad luck," he chortles. "Everything that's really interesting to me happens to involve some scary thing like getting my dick out or learning to dance [for 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying' on Broadway]."

It's a stretch to cast him as Allen Ginsberg in 'Kill Your Darlings', he admits - when Ginsberg was Jewish, working class and American. As he recites satirically: "Daniel Radcliffe: English, Jewish by the way but not really, upper class and definitely looks a million miles away from Allen Ginsberg."

People are amazed that he and Potter co-stars Rupert Grint and Emma Watson aren't 'f***ed up". "It's great when you come in at that very low place of expectations because you'll always be a pleasant surprise".

He adores TV series 'Come Dine With Me' but admits he has the diet of a "19th-century Irish navvy" - meat and potatoes and bread and cheese. While filming Potter he could never admit to being "very bad" at fruit and vegetables.

Radcliffe also hit the headlines this week when he told Time Out magazine that he "definitely want[s] to have kids", because of the "wonderful change" they bring to a parent's life.