New twist in Harry Potter star's search for love

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Actor Daniel Radcliffe's search for a mystery Australian girl he met at an awards party has taken a twist worthy of his alter-ego Harry Potter.

Two young Australian women have come forward, each claiming to be the beautiful stranger who bewitched the teenage actor during a party at a film awards ceremony in Australia.

But hopes of a meeting between Radcliffe and the women have gone up in a puff of smoke, with Radcliffe's representatives saying his comments about being smitten with a girl who stared at him all night and then disappeared were just a joke.

"(Radcliffe's comments) were meant in jest, but sadly been blown out of all proportion," his London-based representative Vanessa Davies was quoted as telling New York's Daily News.

Newspapers in Australia have been searching for the mystery women after 18-year-old Radcliffe told an interviewer he was smitten with a woman he met at a party, although he didn't manage to get her name and phone number.

"I must have walked around that party for an hour trying to look for this girl, like some sad pathetic dweeb, but it would have been worth it," he told Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper in an interview published on Monday.

The paper said it had found two women who were at the party with Radcliffe and who both say they were the ones to catch Radcliffe's eye.

But the women, Cassi Mackay and Savannah Blount, both 23, say they already have boyfriends, describing Radcliffe as lovely, "charming and very polite."

Radcliffe, who started playing Potter in the popular Harry Potter movies when he was 11, has often spoken about not being able to find a girlfriend.

Reuters/Nielsen