Daniel Radcliffe

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has fought off competition from Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom to land the lead role in a new movie about a slain photo-journalist.

The 22-year-old will appear as photographer Dan Eldon in Journey, a film chronicling the civil war in Somalia. Eldon was one of four journalists stoned to death by a mob in the African country in 1993.

And Eldon's mother Kathy believes Radcliffe was the perfect choice to play her tragic son.

She says, "We resisted a lot of older actors because Dan was a boy emerging into manhood."

A compilation of Eldon's diaries - on which the film is based - has sold 200,000 copies since being published in 1997.