James McAvoy made his name in television, but the Scottish actor is just as comfortable with Hollywood heavyweights. Celestine Cooneyfalls under the spell of the Bafta winner
I meet the Scottish actor James McAvoy for the first time on the set of a shoot for V, the US fashion magazine. He emerges unnoticed into the sunlit studio and rugby-tackles his unsuspecting press agent. The two fool around, mock-fighting like a couple of bear cubs. Like most actors, he is much smaller than you imagine, about 170cm (5ft 7in), and under his floppy brown hair his eyes are an intense blue. I am styling McAvoy for the photographs and have set my heart on his wearing a kilt. He starts to try on the designer kilts I've brought with me. A Moschino one looks "grand", he says, but when he tries it on it's the wrong shape, and a Vivienne Westwood one looks like a "guril's skirt", he proclaims in his thick Glaswegian accent.
McAvoy is one of the hottest young acting talents Scotland has to offer, but until recently he has managed to remain just under the publicity radar, because of his refusal to court the media. He is fiercely protective of his private life and refuses to talk about his actress wife, Anne-Marie Duff, whom he met on the set of the Channel 4 series Shameless, in which he also appeared. The couple married this year and live in Islington, in north London. "The best advice I've ever been given was not to talk about my personal life too much. My work is my work, and my life is my life. I like to keep the two separate," he says.
It's hard to say how much longer he will manage to maintain this relative anonymity, with a string of high-profile films in the offing, and acclaim from the film industry. When I mention the Bafta he won last year, the Orange Rising Star award, he seems a little perplexed and says: "It was very surprising to win it. Gael García Bernal was nominated. There were some amazing actors up for the award. I didn't think I deserved to win it, but I guess it did make me think things were going better than I had realised."
McAvoy was born in 1979 in Drumchapel, a suburb of Glasgow. Following the break-up of his parents' marriage, he was raised by his grandparents, and his childhood was a happy one. His initial interest in acting was sparked off when David Hayman, an actor and director, gave a talk at his school. McAvoy asked if he would keep him in mind for future parts. Six months later he was offered an audition for The Near Room, Hayman's next film, and got the part. "I never really wanted to be an actor or anything. I was just sort of wriggling around, trying to work out what to do with myself."
He secured a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, however, and soon after graduating he won a role in the HBO television series Band of Brothers, coproduced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Parts in the Emmy-winning miniseries Children of Dune and Channel 4's adaptation of Zadie Smith's book White Teeth followed. McAvoy is probably best known for his roles as Steve in Shameless, written by Paul Abbott, and as Mr Tumnus the faun in the film adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
It took three and a half hours each day to transform McAvoy into his half-man, half-goat Narnia character. He was covered in glue and hair, which would fall off in clumps every couple of minutes, when someone would have to run in and hot-tong it back on. "The first face they did was terrifying. I ended up with a massive snout, and it just looked Satanic, like I was going to sacrifice Lucy to Beelzebub," he says.
Starter for 10, one of his most recent films, is an adaptation of the hugely popular book by the UK author David Nicholls. The film documents the ups and downs of a working-class student, Brian Jackson, as he navigates his way through his first year at Bristol University, during which he pins all his hopes on taking part in the quiz show University Challenge. It is a romantic comedy set in the mid-1980s, with haircuts and soundtrack to match. Angst-ridden teenage tracks from The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs and Kate Bush make for a nostalgic backdrop. McAvoy says it's the role he's played so far that's most like him. "The thing about Brian is that he's very shy. He thinks he's such a nerd, but, as much as he's a geek, he's in love with the idea of his own genius," he says.
Starter for 10 was also produced by Tom Hanks, whom McAvoy met on the set of Band of Brothers. "I just started babbling on and on and telling him how great I thought he was in Joe Versus the Volcano, because I love that movie, and he almost had to tell me to take it easy and sit down," McAvoy says. "It was strange to meet Ian McKellen, too, because all I could think was, oh my God, it's Gandalf."
McAvoy came to Ireland in April last year to take the romantic lead in Becoming Jane, directed by Julian Jarrold and co-starring Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and Anne Hathaway. He plays the disarmingly charming Irish rogue Tom Lefroy, whose affair with Jane Austen (played by Hathaway, star of The Devil Wears Prada and the Princess Diaries films) is thought to have inspired her to write Pride and Prejudice.
"Dublin is great, you know . . . the place, the people; it's similar to Glasgow." He goes on to enthuse about the Irish countryside. "I love Galway, and hiking and camping in Wicklow; it's such a gorgeous, beautiful place."
During filming McAvoy likes to stay in rented houses or apartments. "I hate staying in hotels. You lose yourself when everything is done for you. If you don't clean up after yourself or cook your own dinner you become a child again, and you need that one little spark of independence."
McAvoy was challenged by his role in the forthcoming film of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, which he filmed in London last year with Keira Knightley. McAvoy plays Robbie Turner, a Cambridge graduate accused of a crime he didn't commit. "It was so hard to play Robbie, because I've never met anybody like that. I'm not even sure someone like Robbie exists. I mean, the guy is completely good. He's a saint." McAvoy says that Joe Wright, who made the version of Pride and Prejudice in which Knightley starred, as well as Atonement, is the best director he has worked with, adding that it is the film he is most proud of.
His next film is equally hard-hitting. In The Last King of Scotland, directed by his Oscar-winning fellow Scotsman Kevin Macdonald, he plays a young doctor who travels to Uganda and finds himself serving as personal physician to Idi Amin, who is played by Forest Whitaker. The film co-stars Gillian Anderson, and working alongside Hollywood stars is something McAvoy is getting used to. In Penelope, directed by Mark Palansky and filmed in London in 2005, he starred with the Hollywood heavyweights Christina Ricci and Reese Witherspoon - whom, he says, were great to work with.
It's difficult not to admire McAvoy's lack of ego and down-to-earth nature. He exudes charm and charisma, and it's easy to see why he seduces camera and audience alike. Our shoot finishes in the early afternoon, and McAvoy thanks everybody, more than once, and exits as unceremoniously as he arrived. The girls sigh, and we are all left standing around the studio, smitten and basking a little in the McAvoy glow. u
The Last King of Scotland opens on Friday