E-mail a friendJames McAvoy
airdate June 20, 2008
Actor James McAvoy is a fast-rising star, who originally wanted to become a missionary. Instead, the Glasgow native graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and hasn't looked back. His credits include HBO's critically acclaimed miniseries The Band of Brothers, the Sci-Fi Channel series Children of Dune and the films The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last King of Scotland, Atonement and, his latest, Wanted. The multi-talented McAvoy also plays guitar and is a class 4 fencer and a gymnast.
Actor explains what he wants his legacy to be and what it was like working with Morgan Freeman. (4:22)
Full Interview (11:06)
James McAvoy
Tavis: Following his breakout role in the terrific film, "The Last King of Scotland," James McAvoy is rapidly becoming one of Hollywood's most sought after young leading men. Last year, he earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in "Atonement." He's back now this summer in a new film called "Wanted." The movie hits theaters next weekend and stars Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. Here now a scene from "Wanted."
[Clip]
Tavis: Wow (laughter).
James McAvoy: Right. If you have a fly infestation, just give me a call. I'm happy to serve.
Tavis: Who needs Orkin when you got James McAvoy?
McAvoy: I mean, fly beware.
Tavis: Yeah. Nice to see you again.
McAvoy: Nice to see you.
Tavis: Can I just start by saying, it's been a minute now, but you were absolutely phenomenal in "The Last King of Scotland."
McAvoy: Thank you very much.
Tavis: I mean, you were so good in that.
McAvoy: Well, thank you.
Tavis: You enjoyed it, I take it?
McAvoy: I had an amazing experience.
Tavis: And Forest wins Best Actor for that movie.
McAvoy: That was just the perfect way to finish the whole kind of adventure, you know, and to be able to be there and see him when it was just incredible. It was such an honor, such a privilege.
Tavis: There's an interesting backstory to this particular film, "Wanted," and you'll get the joke and I'll let you explain it to the audience.
McAvoy: All right.
Tavis: So what's it like to have a girlfriend who loves everybody, wants everybody but you?
McAvoy: Ah, well, yes. It's a bit of a shame really. It's that horrible thing where his girlfriend's having a relationship with his best friend and he knows about it, but he just won't do anything about it because he's so depressed that he can't actually summon up the courage to do anything and he just lives like that for years until his life is threatened and he's forced to do something about it.
Tavis: Yeah, so give me a little bit more. This is one of those movies that I have to let you explain because I don't want to give too much away.
McAvoy: Go for it.
Tavis: No, no.
McAvoy: No, no. You mean, there's a couple of -
Tavis: - well, your father was in this fraternity.
McAvoy: The thing is, my character grows up without a daddy, grows up never knowing his father because his father died when he was born, or so he was told. Then one day he meets a woman who says, "I knew your father and he was alive the entire time. However, he was murdered today and the guy who killed him is now standing behind you and he's going to try and kill you."
He gets off on the opportunity to train as a master assassin and chase the man who killed his dad and he's trying to kill him and exact revenge and all that. But is it really all like that or is there something else going on, you know? It's one of those.
Tavis: You did a good job explaining that (laughter).
McAvoy: Thank you very much.
Tavis: (Laughter) A very good job. You were talking when the clip was playing. You were whispering to me about how fun it was for you, how cool it was, to work with Morgan Freeman.
McAvoy: He's just incredible. He's one of those guys. I don't know. Like I was really young - when I was in high school, I saw "The Shawshank Redemption" for the first time. I must have been, what, thirteen or something, I think. Yet you wouldn't think that I would identify with a man of his age from America, yet I don't know what it was, but all the kids in my school were like, "That guy was pure cool, man. He was blowing, you know." I've always just felt so connected to him whenever he was onscreen.
To get to work with somebody like that is kind of amazing, you know. And the greatest thing I found about him is, you know, I'm experienced now and I think I know what I'm doing and I'd be discussing about, "Oh, I don't know about this line. Maybe I should change that line. I'll speak to the director and I'm speaking, 'Oh, I don't know. What do you think, what do you think?' And Morgan comes in and he speaks it like - he manages to make it sound like Shakespeare. He's just incredible, man. I like to learn from him.
Tavis: Yeah. Have you seen "March of the Penguins?"
McAvoy: I haven't seen "March of the Penguins."
Tavis: For those who've seen it, they know what I'm talking about. Morgan is as good a voice-over artist as he is an actor, I think. So "March of the Penguins" is - I never thought, to your point, I never thought I would care at all about seeing a movie about penguins, but the way that Morgan Freeman tells this story of the march of the penguins is just unbelievable. So I recommend that.
McAvoy: Yep.
Tavis: If you like Morgan's voice, check out "March of the Penguins."
McAvoy: I like more than this voice, though. He's just incredible. I like more than his voice.
Tavis: He's a great guy, yeah.
McAvoy: But, no, he's a classy guy.
Tavis: Yeah. Any intimidation factor working with someone of his stature?
McAvoy: Yeah, totally. You know, the film, like him and Angelina. Not only incredible actors, but master stars as well and hugely experienced. Yeah, there was an intimidation factor, but, I mean, after ten or fifteen minutes of being introduced to people like that, you quickly can get into talking nonsense and having a laugh. And also the stories that come out of Morgan are brilliant. You know, you're not just like free-flowing with him, but you just kind of go, "What was [inaudible] like?" Do you know what I mean? He was like, "Well,…" and you're there for an hour and it's amazing. It's great.
Tavis: I know you've seen this and, from what I'm told, you're a pretty low-key guy, so this stuff makes you a little uncomfortable. But these Sean Connery comparisons -
McAvoy: - Sean Connery? Are you kidding me? I'm being shot as Sean Connery in Scotland and I don't think -
Tavis: - they keep saying that you are the next thing.
McAvoy: That's very nice.
Tavis: Given the backgrounds, that you're like this new Sean Connery.
McAvoy: That's very nice of people to say so, to be compared to nice people and good people, but, no, I don't see the comparison myself. But thank God they compare me to good people.
Tavis: Well, you're starting to kiss a bunch of pretty girls like Angelina, Keira Knightley, yeah.
McAvoy: Yeah. They're very lucky, aren't they?
Tavis: (Laughter).
McAvoy: Oh, dear, I'm gonna pay for that.
Tavis: (Laughter) So back to Sean Connery. So we have seen now after all these years his body of work. Of course, we get this retrospective view of his work and we're watching you as you are building your resume. How much time, attention, thought do you give to the kind of body of work that you are building and that you want to be your legacy years down the road?
McAvoy: It's something that I've started to have to think about very recently. Just the last job I did, I picked it very consciously. But before that, like "Wanted," "The Last King of Scotland," "Atonement," "Penelope," "Becoming Jane," all these things that I had to audition for.
Really, if I was choosing well, maybe I would have picked those jobs, but really it was about me saying, "I would love to do this; please, can I do it?" Then finally someone else choosing my career for me. Now I suppose I'm starting to have to be a little bit more strategic in my choices. But until now, I'm just gonna roll with my luck and thankfully I've got the jobs that have -
Tavis: - that's pretty good luck from the list of movies you just laid out for us.
McAvoy: Yeah. No, totally. I mean, really, the jobs that have jigsawed together, I would have loved to have done them, of course. But the choice was in the hands of someone else, you know.
Tavis: Yeah. As a James Bond fan, I've studied Connery's career enough to have a good idea now of how he got started. Take me back to your being a kid and watching "The Shawshank Redemption" with your classmates and figuring out that you wanted to get in this business one day.
McAvoy: Well, I didn't really. I watched films like that and I love movies. I watched a lot of movies with my parents on VHS. I mean, betamax right from the beginning (laughter), but it was never really something I considered. Not because anybody was keeping me back or I wasn't allowed. I just never considered it. It just didn't seem like something that happened to people, you know.
Then someone gave me a job when I was sixteen years old in a film literally out of the blue. They just asked me would I like an audition for a film. Had I acted before? I said no. I went along for the audition and they gave me the part and that was then the beginning of me going, "Well, maybe I can do this."
Tavis: What do you make of that? That this was not something that you - I mean, there are people who spend a lifetime trying to find their way to the big screen in Hollywood and somebody offers you a part? You take it and you discover along the way that you're pretty good at this.
McAvoy: Hugely lucky. I mean, I was pretty bad in that film, I have to say. I don't know what it is. I feel really bad for people that have been, you know, trying to do it since they were five years old and then I can stumble into it. But the thing that I would say is, though, I still went for training. I still had a three-year theater training in Scotland and that really lets you discover whether you should be an actor or not.
Not only does it give you the tools to become an actor, but it lets you figure out whether you really want to or not. Because I've never worked as hard as I worked when I was at theater school. They worked me like fifteen hours a day, six days a week. I've never been so professional in the industry as I was before I this training, so you really discover whether your heart's in it or not, you know.
Tavis: What do you learn? Take me back to that moment. What do you learn, what did you learn, from the theater experience being deluged in it that way?
McAvoy: I suppose I learned that, if I was going to be successful in this industry, which I might not be, but if I were to be successful in this industry, it would consume a humongous part of my energy and my life. I also learned that I didn't mind that, that I was very keen to give myself up to it, you know. But I think that you have the opportunity and some feel like, "Do you know what? This isn't for me. I could be a good actor, but I don't want to devote so much of my energy to this one thing." It's all-consuming, you know.
Tavis: You're being more strategic in what way? What are you looking for? How are you trying to map this thing out? I want to grade you twenty years from now.
McAvoy: Oh, good God.
Tavis: You tell me now what I should be looking for.
McAvoy: It's a scary one, isn't it? Because as soon as you get a little bit of success behind you, people expect you to do good things because you have a choice, so you'd better do good things or, you know, you're doing a disserve to the audience. I don't know. The job that I just did, I picked because it was very different from "Wanted." I've been really lucky. Like I say, my career has, you know, been largely aligned by other people, but I've been really lucky that I've always had the opportunity to play different types of characters and have a broad range to investigate.
After doing "Wanted," I wanted to make sure I did something completely different, so I went and did an ensemble piece which wasn't just about like one man's journey and one man's kind of change in character. It was about six people and it was about Tolstoy, so it's really far removed from sort of modern-day Chicago. But I also wanted to do something different from "Atonement" and "The Last King of Scotland" and all that, so I did something less thriller-based and less kind of love movie-based. Love movie. I'm in a love movie. That's a strange thing to say (laughter).
Tavis: He's in some ways just getting started, but he's building up a nice resume of work for us to sit back and talk about twenty years down the road. His name is James McAvoy. The new film, "Wanted," starring him and Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie. James, nice to have you here. Good to see you.
McAvoy: Thank you very much.
Back to June 20, 2008