Big Mac

Date: October 2007 Publication: Esquire Country: United Kingdom Author: Rachel Cooke Excerpt: McAvoy seems genuinely unsure as to why he gets so much work- "I'm not devastatingly handsome, and I'm not devastatingly minging, so I can play either side of that line"

The full article... For a movie star, James McAvoy is very much in touch with his inner nerd. "I like outdoor performance gear," he says. What, fleeces and stuff? "Well, I see the value of a fleece, but actually fleece is my least favourite outdoor wear. I have tem, I wear them and I invest in them, but I perfer something a bit more...water resistant. My all-time favourite would be a good pair of waterproof trousers- or gaiters. I like a good gaiter. And I love my tents." He grins. He got into camping when he was in the Scouts, and now it's his favourite escape. Last year, when McAvoy was promoting the film Starter For 10, he regaled one journalist with the story of how he'd dragged his costar, Benedict Cumberbatch up a mountain in the Brecon Beacons. They were running late because Cumberbatch had seen a steak and kidney pie in a shop in Hay-On-Wye that he'd been unable to resist; by the time they were on the hill, a thick mist had descended. "It was brilliant," said McAvoy. "This sheer drop, 1000 ft down, just to your left. You knew it was there, but you just had to trust that you wouldn't step out into it. And then the cloud cleared for 10 mintes...I just felt I was in heaven." At this particular moment, the Brecon Beacons must seem far away indeed. McAvoy has come to meet me straight from the fitting of a suit for the Venice Film Festival, where he will attend the unveiling of the long awaited film version of Ian McEwan's novel, Atonement. He is currently on a 10 day break from Universal Pictures' sci-fi epic, Wanted, in which he stars alongside Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, but will rejoin the cast later this week in Prague. After he finishes there, it's back to plugging Atonement. He is tired- the skin beneath his eyes is a delicate shade of lilac- and suffering from viral laryngitis and, on top of everything else, he and his wife, Anne Marie Duff, have just been gazumped on the house they were trying to buy. "I've been in a bad mood for 3 days," he says. "I had post-job comedown, then I got ill-I always so when I stop working- and being fucked in the arse by people who have a lot of money is not nice." But you're a movie star. They don't get gazumped. He gives me a look. "Well, I haven't yet been in a film that has made me millions." Is he still in a bad mood? "No, just tired." I'm not convinced. The black clouds might be on the retreat, but they're still in the sky, if you ask me. Which is not to say that he is being difficult. McAvoy has lovely old fashioned manners; you can just imagine him cheerily hailing some fellow GoreTex-clad rambler as they pass on a stile. When he turns up at the restaurant where we're meeting, he asks me if I mind if he keeps his mobile switched on. This is unprecedented in the history of celebrity interviews. His Victoria sponge arrives- usually actors ask for green tea with a side order of honey, or explain in boring detail exactly how they take their mineral water- and he tells me that it's amazing, I must try it. Later, he becomes anxious about spitting. "I'm spitting at you!" he says. "There's something about this light that makes it seem like I'm spitting a lot. You're probably spitting just as much as me, but the light's different over there. Anyway, I'm sorry." He would rather die than act the star. When we talk about the run of luck he's having in terms of parts- Starter For 10, The Last King of Scotland (for which Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Idi Amin won an Oscar), Atonement- he says: "I will choose a turkey one day, I promise. I just will. Who knows, I might even have already chosen one!" This is unlikely. I had dreaded seeing Atonement; I loved the book and was anxious about what they might have done to it. "It's a kind of demolition job," says Ian McEwan. You've got to get my 130,000 words down to a screenplay containing 25,000 words. This is a novel with particular difficulties for the screenwriter because it's a very interior novel." But I needn't have worried. McEwan thinks that Christopher Hampton, its screenwriter, and Joe Wright, it's director, have steered a "wise course" through the book and, for what it's worth, I agree. Atonement tells the story of the consequences of one fat day in 1935. Briony Tallis and her family live a life of privilege in a grand country house. But Briony, who will one day become a novelist, has a feverish imagination. She sees things that she cannot understand, and fatally confused, she finally accuses Robbie Turner, a housekeeper's son with whom her sister Cecilia, played by Keira Knightley, is in love, of a crime he did not commit. Life will never be the same for any of them again. McAvoy turns in a faultless and desperately affecting performance as Robbie, whose Cambridge education has been paid for by his lover's father, so that he is both a part of her world and forever a stranger to it. Especially moving are the scenes in which, having joined the army as a private, Robbie finds himself on the beaches of France during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940; they're devastatingly raw edged. "I too found it a bit overwhelming when I watched it," says McAvoy, "I cried my eyes out." McAvoy, still only 28, grew up on a Glasgow houseing estate. When he was seven, his parents split up and he and his sister moved in with his maternal grandparents. His mother, a psychiatric nurse, lived with the family on and off; his father, however, pretty much disappeared from the picture, and McAvoy has not seen him for years (when he won a "rising star" award at last year's Baftas, his father sold a self-pitying story to the Sunday Mirror- a descision that left his son unmoved). I like the sound of his grandparents. His grandfather, a butcher, and grandmother were feisty and strict; he was aware of having less freedom than his mates. "They brought me up to be nice to people," he says. Are they proud of him. "Very, very proud. They find it funny and get a lot of entertainment out of it. Now and then, they'll get to see a red carpet. They've just got their first DVD player, so I sent them some of my stuff, such as Bollywood Queen. Have you seen it? Well, if you haven't, don't rush. 'We can see that you've got better,' they said." McAvoy has always claimed that it was never really his plan to become an actor; it was a kind of accident. A director, David Hayman, had come to give a talk about MacBeth at his school. "There was a bit of banter, and it got a bit rowdy. People were giving him lip. So, at the end, I went up and I said: 'That was brilliant. Could I come and make tea on the set?' We had to do work experience, and I didn't want to be sitting in a fucking IT office. Six months later, he asked me if I wanted to audition for a film he was making. I was mediocre in it, and I've always felt bad about that because he was doing such a positive thing for me. For the next 2 years, I worked in a bakery. I went to London to do The Bill, but that was about it. I was going to join the navy, or I was going to try and get into university by going back to school and doing my Highers. But then I thought: I should try drama school as well." He chose the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama on the grounds that it was the least expensie, and he could live at home, and he loved it (apart from the tern he spent studying method acting with a dour Russian: "I don't hate Stanislavasky, but I do think that the Method attracts people who are up their own arses in terms of ego, who mistake intensity for good acting."). When he graduated, a lot of his contemporaries went to London, so theatre roles in Scotland were easier to come by. "I got a lot of experience very quickly." There were two big breaks: the political drama, State of Play, and Shameless, in which he played Steve, the medical student-turned-car theif (both were written by Paul Abbott). Shameless was not a happy time. It wasn't that he was depressed exactly, but he did spend a lot of time hanging round his Manchester flat, eating junk food. "We never knew where we were going with it. My character was supposed to be a Glaswegian and working class, then suddenly he was southern and middle class. I couldn't be fucked with it. It wasn't for me. I wanted out, so I got out." Amazing to know his own mind at that stage in his career- to leave a hit series not knowing what he would do next. But Shameless stuck in people's minds. He was in just 12 episodes, but people still shout "SHAMELESS!" at him in the street. The best thing about the series was that it was where he met his wife (their characters enjoyed some full-on sex scenes for which McAvoy had to don a very non-sexy flesh coloured body stocking). He and Duff, who is nine years his senior, have an agreement not to speak about one another interviews. For the record, I think this makes people more curious about their relationship, not less. It's just weird: at one point, he lists nearly every actor who was in Shamelless by name, except her. The only time he has ever talked about her in public was in his Bafta acceptance speech: "I would like to thank Anne-Marie, because she taught me to respect life, and it took my career to a whole new level." It is still just seven years since he left drama school. What a CV> He's even played a bloody faun. (McAvoy was Mr Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia, a part he was thrilled to get because- I told you he was in touch with his inner nerd- he loves CS Lewis's novels.) He was great as the misguided Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland- his slight frame really suited the Seventies gear. But for my money, his best role so far was as Brian, the geeky student who joins a University Challenge team in Starter For 10; the self-conspicuous shimmy he does on entering his first student party (it is set in the 80s) is so right- it is worth seeing the film for that alone. McAvoy seems genuinely unsure as to why he gets so much work- "I'm not devastatingly handsome, and I'm not devastatingly minging, so I can play either side of that line"- and wonders out loud why it is that some actors suddenly stop being any good: "Why does that happen? It's slightly terrifying." He does, however, know that he will soon reach the stage where he no longer wants to be away from home for months at a time. "[Travelling] is fun when you're younger, but I've only got a couple more years before I start putting my foot down and saying, 'What do you mean I'm not big enough for them to shoot it in England?'" He laughs. My sense- this is only a hunch- is that he is not enjoying his work now quite as much as he did when he had nothing to lose. Is he happy? "I'm as happy as you can be," he says, uncertainly. "I still have the desire to try and be hapy, and a lot of people don't. That's what unhappy is: when you stop wanting to be happy." But whatever happens, he certainly won't be going to live in Los Angeles. OK, then. What about his teeth. For a Scot, they're not bad, but still...is he going to get them fixed? "Am I fuck! Only when they all fall out." [full-link]Read more •[/full-link]