Meet "Equus" actor Lorenzo Pisoni, the guy Harry Potter thinks is Hot!

So this is the guy Harry Potter thinks is hot.

Meet "Equus" actor Lorenzo Pisoni, of whom Daniel Radcliffe said, "If I was gay or a female, I'd just want to marry him. He's gorgeous, and he's a really cool bloke as well."

"Honestly, I think he was trying to embarrass me," says Pisoni, who plays both horse and rider in Peter Shaffer's 1973 drama. The play stars Radcliffe, the crown prince of the Potter film franchise, as a tormented teen.

"It's crazy how it spread," Pisoni adds. "I've heard from a lot of friends I've not heard from in ages, mocking me and congratulating me on my possible nuptials."

It can't be easy trotting across a stage with a 19-year-old, 130-pound superstar on your shoulders, but somebody has to do it. And it's just as well that somebody is Pisoni, a former Cirque du Soleil ringmaster and acrobat who stands 6-foot-7 in his hooves.

"My father's a clown - literally, a clown," the 31-year-old said the other day, over a heaping bowl of pasta ("We horses are the Michael Phelpses of Broadway").

As the son of the founders of San Francisco's Pickle Family Circus, Pisoni started doing "bits" at age 2, when he wandered out onstage with a beat-up top hat, toy bowling pins and a suitcase.

He was in good company: Bill Irwin was a Pickle person too, becoming young Lorenzo's unofficial godfather. Years later, Irwin helped Pisoni land a manager in New York. He acted as "comedy consultant" to Matthew Broderick and David Arquette, whom he taught "the basics of tripping."

Given all the fancy footwork Pisoni has to do in "Equus" - on a moving stage, no less, in an aluminum mask and 7-inch metal "hooves" - he has worked hard on not tripping, especially when Radcliffe, his heels dug into stirrups around Pisoni's waist, is on his back.

"The other night, Dan got his foot stuck in my harness, and my instinct to hold his leg was probably not the wisest thing," Pisoni says, ruefully.

"With people seated on the stage, we couldn't say anything, but he tapped my back, like, 'Let go of me,' and his message came through loud and clear . . .

"He's fantastic," Pisoni adds. "Very sharp, well-read and with a wicked sense of humor. [The show] is not about him, it's about us."

That said, he adds, "I don't want to be known as the guy who dropped Harry Potter."

(Article from the New York Post)