Every single person in the world is interesting – they’re a walking story.
Does this face look familiar to you? I bet it does. Some of you may know him from your childhood, some from a historical movie, while others will recognise him from action movies or one of his more violent roles. No matter which character he is portraying, he sure leaves a mark on his audience with his brilliant acting. Please, let me introduce you to one of my favourite actors: James McAvoy.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland, on April 21, 1979, he went to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and made his acting debut in 1995 as a teenager in “The Near Room”. For the first couple of years he was mostly seen in TV productions and in several West End productions, such as West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Hoping from small to big roles, from TV to movie to stage productions, he makes sure to always challenge himself with the roles he accepts.
After following his career for about 15 years, he never ceases to amaze me with his acting. He steps into his characters’ mind that somehow I forget that he is an actor, especially when he is playing a scary person who I wish to never meet on the street. Some actors are only good in one specific genre and they never leave it. McAvoy is the opposite.
In 2005, the movie in which McAvoy not only climbs his way up to the big screen productions, he also played his way into every child’s heart. McAvoy portrays the faun Mr. Tumnus in the movie adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and it marked the first movie I saw him in. Narnia tells the story of four siblings who are sent away from London to the countryside during the Second World War. While playing hide and seek, the youngest of them, Lucy, hides in a wardrobe and discovers Narnia by accident, which called to her because it is seeking help to defeat the white witch.
His role is not a big one, but the scenes Mr. Tumnus has with Lucy, who he becomes friend with when she first went through the wardrobe, are one of my most beloved memories.
In 2006, McAvoy took a role which was completely different from Mr. Tumnus when he played Dr. Nicholas Garrigan in the historical drama The Last King of Scotland where he becomes the personal doctor of the brutal president of Uganda played by Forest Whitaker. He then starred in the fantasy romantic comedy next to Christina Ricci in Penelope. Cursed by a witch because of revenge, the next daughter born to the Wilhern family will be born with the face of a pig. As every good love story goes, only true love can lift the curse, which happens to be McAvoy’s character, Max. If you have not seen this movie by now, I highly recommend it, because it has a great cast and the story is really adorableand will give you all the Happily Ever After feelings.
In 2007, he starred alongside Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane, which was followed by the book adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which also starred Keira Knightly and he won the British Academy Scotland Award in the category Best Actor in Film. Taking place during the Second World War, the movie tells the story of love and how a little lie can ruin more than just one live.
That’s the main thing that attracts me – characters who have big journeys. I like playing those people.
After watching so many movies with him, I can tell you that it seem to be his thing to go from one extreme to another. From the heart breaker to the action packed to the brutal lead role.
In 2008, he starred next to Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie in Wanted, which tells the story of Wesley, a very frustrated account manager, who discovers that he is the son of a professional assassin and decided to join the secret organisation to become one as well. Be aware, this movie is not for people who have problem with brutality and an insane amount of blood. Still, it is one of my favourite movies because of the fact that you cannot take it seriously and the acting and actions scenes are just awesome.
Another pattern of his is to squeeze in a historical movie ever once in a while. In 2009, he played in the biopic of Leo Tolstoy next to Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer in The Last Station before playing the lawyer of Mary Surrat, the only female conspirator charged in the Abraham Lincoln assassination and the first woman to be executed by the US government, Frederick Aiken in The Conspirator.
In 2010, not only was his son born, he also took on his first voice role in the animation movie Gnomeo & Juliet, which is just a sort of Romeo & Juliet reimagining for kids.
The role which brought him back in front of the camera is at the same time the one which, for me, established him completely in the movie business. Stepping in the footsteps of Sir Patrick Stewart, McAvoy shaved his head and took on the professorship as young Charles Xavier in the prequel movie X-Men: First Class in 2011.
Before returning for the sequel, to which we will come to in just a second, he put the wheelchair into the storeroom to play in two action packed movies, Welcome to the Punch next to Mark Strong and the psychosocial thriller Trance alongside Rosario Dawson, in 2013. Maybe because I saw them one after the other, for me they are quite similar so if I have to recommend you one of them, I would recommend Welcome to the Punch.
Until this very day I am confused about the splitting into Him, Her, and Them with the collective title known as The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, starring also Jessica Chastain. Him and Her were the work-in-progress title of the not finished movie shown at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013, while Them, the finished movie, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014. The movie shows a couple’s marriage from the three mentioned angles with all their ups and downs.
Taking a break from acting, he voiced the lead role in the BBC radio play adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book Neverwhere. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes audiobooks or if you just want to listen to Benedict Cumberbatch or Natalie Dormer’s voice next to McAvoy’s. You can listen to it on YouTube or buy your copy on Amazon.
For me the most awful role, which he still portrayed fabulous, he has every played so far is in the movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Filth. He plays a manipulative Detective Sergeant in Edingburgh, Scotland, who loves to bully and spends all his free time-consuming alcohol and drugs. I preferred him more as Dr Victor Frankenstein in Victor Frankenstein where he and Daniel Radcliffe re-tell the story of the famous doctor who wants to raise the death.
Thank goodness for 2014 and 2016 when he returned to portray Charles Xavier in X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse. If you happen to know me, you will know that Charles Xavier is one of my favourite fictional characters. Watching Stewart and McAvoy playing the same character next to each other only for a few minutes is everything I wished for.
When M. Night Shyamalan decided to make a sequel to his 2000 superhero thriller Unbreakable, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis, called Split in 2016, he cast McAvoy to portray the leading role who is split into 23 different personalities. While Jackson and Willis played the stereotypes of hero and villain, McAvoy is both trapped in one person. 22 of his personalities live side by side in fear of the 23rd, which they call the Beast, and kidnap three teenage girls for him as a sacrifice.
In 2017 he stepped into the sidekick position next to Charlize Theron in the spy movie Atomic Blonde taking place in Berlin, Germany, around the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, before playing James More in the same year in Submergence, of which you can read more about in my movie review here.
2018 saw McAvoy take up two voicing roles where he reprised his role as Gnomeo in Sherlock Gnomes and lends his voice to Hazel in the British-Irish-American animated television miniseries based on the novel by Richard Adams Watership Down, which aired on December 22nd in the UK and then released on Netflix internationally.
Now, let’s have a look on the near future. So far, four productions will be released in 2019. In January the sequel to Split came into our cinemas. Glass combines Unbreakable with Split and brings back Jackson and Willis into their iconic roles next to McAvoy’s Beast.
Marvel fans will be – hopefully – pleased to watch the forth prequel movie in the young X-Men Generation in X-Men: Dark Phoenix and those of you who are fans of Stephen King and horror movies will have the pleasure to see him in IT 2 as one of the grown up kids, Bill Denbrough. Then there’s also the TV show adaptation of Philipp Pullman’s books His Dark Materials where he will play Lord Asriel.
