Two Broadway stars put Potter and Snape behind them

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Alan Rickman had a special visitor to his dressing room at the Golden Theatre Monday night: Daniel Radcliffe.

The actors from the Harry Potter movies — Rickman played Severus Snape and Radcliffe was Potter himself — are appearing on Broadway concurrently. Radcliffe spent his night off from the revival of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” taking in a preview of “Seminar,” the new Theresa Rebeck play in which Rickman plays a once-famous novelist who mercilessly baits and badgers a group of aspiring writers. ‘Seminar’ opens Nov. 20; Radcliffe is with ‘How to Succeed’ until Jan. 1.

Radcliffe found the production to be inspiring, Rickman said. “He told me, ‘This makes me want to do a play, I have to do a play,’ ” he recalled in his dressing room before a recent rehearsal. “And I told him, ‘Daniel, you have years ahead of you ….’ And he not only has the time but the talent to accomplish much on the stage.”

In fact, Rickman had earlier seen Radcliffe as corporate climber J. Pierrepont Finch in “How to Succeed” and pronounced his singing and dancing in the role as “brilliant.”

What Radcliffe meant, of course, is that he yearned to get back to the nonmusical stage, having already made his Broadway debut in a 2008 revival of “Equus,” in which he played a disturbed young stable hand who in a psychosexual rage blinds six horses one night — a decided departure from his heroic young wizard on film.

Rickman says one reward of being in the movies made from J.K. Rowling’s seven-volume Harry Potter opus was the privilege of “watching three kids turn into three adults, imperceptibly it seems, over 10 years. And now being able to sit in a café in New York with Daniel, talking about something loosely called ‘process.’ ”

Though he is a person who guards his privacy closely, the actor says his anonymity has not been much compromised by the enormous popularity of the Harry Potter movies. “I don’t wander around in a black wig,” he said, deadpan.

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— Patrick Pacheco

Above: Daniel Radcliffe, left, stars on Broadway in the revival of ‘How to Succeed Without Really Trying.’ Alan Rickman, right, is about to open in the play ‘Seminar.’ Credits: Radcliffe, Cindy Ord/Getty Images. Rickman, Jemal Countess/Getty Images