James McAvoy Interview, WANTED

Visionary director Timur Bekmambetov (creator of “Day Watch” and “Irony of Fate: The Continuation,” the biggest two films in the history of Russian cinema) powers this twisted and visceral adventure of 25-year-old Wesley Gibson (McAvoy), a slacker who hates his life – with good reason, because it sucks.

In his short career, James McAvoy has tested himself with a wide variety of work, on stage, television and film, and is regarded as one of the U.K.’s most exciting acting talents. Born in the Scotstoun area of Glasgow, Scotland in 1979, he is a graduate of the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. The award winning actor has been seen in “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” “The Last King of Scotland” opposite Forest Whitaker, and most recently, “Atonement” with Keira Knightley.

James McAvoy is a fabulous guy and we really appreciated his time. Dressed in black and sporting a cool leather jacket, here’s what he had to tell us about his latest film:

MoviesOnline: You've got your badass hitman look going on with the leather jacket.

JAMES MCAVOY: Hey, man. I have worn leather jackets in the past. Do you know what? I'm just so pleased to be publicizing a film that doesn’t require me to wear a suit 24 hours a day seven days a week. Because generally, the films that I've been publicizing over the last two years have been very serious and that's great and I love them, but I hate wearing suits. So that's the reason I did this film, so I could stop wearing suits.

MoviesOnline: Were you worried about how this film would turn out?

JAMES MCAVOY: Yeah, I think I was probably. I did think, "I can't do an action film." Partly because of my own doubts about my appropriateness for the role. I thought I was probably bad casting for it but I also thought, the action movie genre can be just really seamy and can be really bad. I like action movies when they're good but when they're bad they're such a waste of time. I thought this one, the thing that saved this one for me, there were a few things. First of all, the fact that they were willing to cast somebody like me which I thought might be a bad idea was interesting. The fact that they were giving the job to somebody like Timur whose work, you know, he's making vampire films in the past. I've seen lots of vampire films but he made them very different. I thought, well, he's going to be interesting. And also the fact that they weren't making this movie for all the family. They were making this a very violent R rated film for adults and I've not seen that a lot lately. You can find it if you go to the straight to DVD market but in the mainstream with good production values and commitment and money spent on it, I don't really see that hard R rated film for adults at the moment. They're all superhero movies that are incredibly violent actually, but they're just filmed in a kind of slightly sanitized way. Like Indiana Jones. Ants crawling inside somebody's body and eating them from the inside, that's incredibly disturbing but done in a kinda slightly cutesy way so you can give it to 12-year-olds. This was never going to be like that and I thought, well, this is all quite cool and different. And even if it fails horribly, it was still trying to be something else.

MoviesOnline: Was it a challenge working out for the role?

JAMES MCAVOY: It was. I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I did it. There were times where I just wanted to stop and do nothing else. But I had a great trainer called Glen Chapman who was a proper drill sergeant for me. Nice guy but he made me do things that I didn't want to do and he made me sick quite a lot. And it's good though because apart from the physical aesthetic of they wanted their action hero to be a bit more buff and all that, I wouldn't have got through four and a half months had I not be fitter and more healthy and in better shape than I usually am. I think I was capable of doing all the things in the film but not consistently with the high level intensity being sustained over four and a half months. Because every day was like a 12, 13, maybe 14 hour day and a lot of it was taken up with stunts. That was quite grueling so I needed to be in better shape than I usually am.

MoviesOnline: What was the most grueling stunt?

JAMES MCAVOY: There was a lot of wire stuff that ended up getting cut from the film. The whole ending of the film was different. There was a sequence where Morgan and I fall through like four levels of a building that is blowing up as we fall through the levels, fighting each other as we do it. That was four days on wires in a harness having your groin ruptured and that's never fun. That was probably the most grueling thing, and then to find out that it has been cut out of the film. "Yeah, yeah, it didn't work, wasn't very good. It was really boring." You're like, “What?!” "Yeah, we're reshooting it. We're doing this scene that takes like 20 minutes to film. That will end the film." “What? Is there going to be a harness?” “No.” “All right.”

MoviesOnline: Timur's not even putting it on the DVD.

JAMES MCAVOY: Yeah, pretty much everything's gone. The only stuff that got cut from the film that you could put on the DVD is stuff that they never finished the CGI for. Other than that, pretty much everything that you see is what we shot, edited in incredible and very imaginative ways though, I have to say. He's very clever in the edit suite.

MoviesOnline: Was there a backstory as to how you could shoot so far?

JAMES MCAVOY: There was no science in it. It's completely science fiction. I don't know. I was dubious about that one as well but we have bullets that separate like shuttles. I was sold after I saw that.

MoviesOnline: Do you get excited about emotional scenes like panic attacks?

JAMES MCAVOY: I love doing that. It was also, I felt that the character arc and his journey provided a lot of drama in this as well. I didn't feel like it was just a genre movie. I didn't feel it was just a comic book movie. I felt there was a sufficiently interesting character and someone in a very truthful and actually quite sad place to begin with in the film. So it was scenes like that that made me think, well, I think the actor in me is not going to be unemployed for four and a half months while I do action work, do you know what I mean? I did feel that there was enough to do there to satisfy my acting urge as well. And all the panic attack stuff I loved. I love really physicalizing work, I don't just mean by doing action scenes, but like playing Mr. Tumnus in Narnia. It was such a physical role even though I wasn't doing stunts, it's still incredibly physical. And doing all the panic attack stuff, doing anything that’s emotionally instigated but physically manifested is just really, really interesting I think. It's a complete emotional response, isn't it? A panic attack. I loved all of that.

MoviesOnline: Was it hard to go from geek to assassin day to day?

JAMES MCAVOY: Kind of, yeah. Also because I'd never done a film that took four and a half months to film. Well, Narnia took five months or something like that but I was hardly in it. So when you shoot out of sequence, as you always do, say for two months, it's less spread out because you've only got two months of a shoot. And the film's still going to be the same length as Wanted is, but when you spread it out over four months, there's even more opportunity for it to become disparate and become disjointed. So you really have to be on top of your continuity and your script. You have to really ride the directors and the producers to kind of go, "Wait, wait, wait. While you're making that decision, what happens before? Can I do that actually?" And sometimes you make an ass of yourself because you question them on everything, but sometimes you save stuff that could have gone really badly and really screw up your character's arc. And the story of the character and the story of his metamorphosis and why he changes is really what underpins I suppose the whole film and makes it something more than just action. So it was really important that we got that right.

MoviesOnline: And you went in and out of an American accent? Is that easy?

JAMES MCAVOY: It is. There's a couple of words that I found hard. Girlfriend I found quite hard. But other than that, it was fine. I've got a voice coach that I use when I do American accents. She works with me. She worked with everybody on Band of Brothers but she also did Penelope with me as well. She wasn't available for this but she's so good, I just couldn't imagine working with anybody else, so I didn't. I just thought I'd wing it. It worked out all right in the end but the one word that I had to fix in looping was girlfriend.

MoviesOnline: How was working with Angelina and having a kissing scene?

JAMES MCAVOY: It's great. She's cool. I was quite nervous when I got told that she was in the film because I was cast before anybody else. Then I got told Morgan was going to be in it and I was quite shocked and stunned and wow. Then I was told Angelina was going to be in it and I thought, "F*ck, man, I really didn't think it was going to be that big." So I was quite nervous but within five, 10 minutes, you quickly realize that she's cool and chilled out and fairly willing to have a laugh at her own expense as well as wherever else there's a joke. And she was the one that more so than anybody else probably showed me the way to do these films. I was coming in and I don't know, there's probably a part of me that was worried because I was in a new environment. It was a new genre and slightly on the lookout for being f*cked if you'll excuse my French. But she was the one that kind of just reminded me, "You know, you don't have to take it too seriously. We're not changing people's lives with a film like this. If you can't have fun when you make a film like this, what's the point in doing it?" And it was a really good point and that kind of kept me chilled out for the rest of the time after that. And she's got a great stunt double called Eunice Huthart who could rip my head off really. She's smaller than me but she could kick seven colors of sh*t out of me easily, and she's one of the funniest ladies in the planet. She's just so nice. So we had a good time, really, really good time.

MoviesOnline: Had you read the comic book before?

JAMES MCAVOY: No, no. It was weird because the guy who wrote it's from my hometown of Glasgow but no, I hadn't read it. I read it after I got the script.

MoviesOnline: Did you base any of your character on it?

JAMES MCAVOY: Not really. He's physically and visually based on Eminem which is kind of weird for a start. You start reading it going, "That character looks like Eminem. He really looks like Eminem. And wait a minute, Angelina's character is so clearly physically, visually based on Halle Berry. This is so strange.” It was really strange. I think Eminem and Halle Berry were a bit annoyed about the graphic novel.

MoviesOnline: It was written with Eminem in mind.

JAMES MCAVOY: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's Eminem. The character has nothing to do with Eminem but I think it's a marketing ploy really, more than anything else. So I don't know, that turned me off immediately. "I don't know how useful this is going to be." But the script is incredibly different from the graphic novel. So the first 30 minutes of the film, they share a real common genesis and then they kind of go off in tangents. But the guy who wrote the graphic novel, Mark Millar is really, really pleased with the film even though, he still feels it's, it does still have the sensibilities of the graphic novel I think. Slightly less nihilistic but not that much.

MoviesOnline: You wanted to do all your own stunts?

JAMES MCAVOY: I wanted to but they wouldn't let me. I did a lot of my own stunts, probably 50 or 60% of my own stunts.

MoviesOnline: Did you get hurt?

JAMES MCAVOY: I was really lucky, man. I never broke a single thing. I had a couple of sprains and a couple of twisted knees and ankles and stuff but nothing more than I'd get playing football. I got lots of bruises. I was bruised to hell all over but yeah, I was fine.

MoviesOnline: How was it fighting the butcher?

JAMES MCAVOY: That was fun actually. Those were some of my favorite fight scenes -- the ones with the butcher and the ones with Angelina where she's beating me up. I preferred those fights to the gunfights actually. The gunfights were all kind of, gunfights are just like well, if you've got a gun, there's no drama in it. There's nothing better than going, seeing two people physically touch each other. That's great fun. A gun's like pyow pyow. I'm behind this table and you're behind that wall. Pyow pyow. How exciting. So I loved fighting the butcher and he's quite tough actually, Dato. He was great.

MoviesOnline: Did you have fun in Prague?

JAMES MCAVOY: I'm a veteran of Prague. I've spent probably, I think I counted it once. I think I've spent 15 months of my life in Prague. And I love it very much but I was in every day of this job and I couldn't afford to go out really too much. We were doing 12 to 14 hour days, six days a week and I'm hardly out of the film. I mean, there's a couple of scenes I'm not in so I was there every day. But yeah, we got taken out, we got to blow off some steam. The makeup girls particularly and one of the wardrobe ladies and the stunt team were kind of my support network on this job. They were great. And Common as well actually. He was particularly good fun to hang out with. He was a nice guy.

MoviesOnline: Are you required to mangle Marc Warren's face?

JAMES MCAVOY: That's true actually, you're right. You're very right. Yeah, that's right. God, I forgot about that. Oh God, I totally forgot about that. Yeah, I did a job once with Marc way back called State of Play and in one scene, I kind of watch as David Morrissey beats his face to just a bloody mess. He ends up having to have reconstructive surgery on his face after it, that character. Yeah, so it was nice to turn the tables. Or actually get my chance to beat him up and not just stand there watching.

MoviesOnline: Did you ever have a mundane job that you just hated?

JAMES MCAVOY: I had a very mundane job. I don't know if I hated it but yeah, and there was nice people working there and stuff but yeah, I worked as a baker for two years. That was kind of, I was a training confectioner, so the guy standing beside me who was the grand master confectioner, he would in a very kind of Zen fashion make big cakes and gateaus and wedding cakes and birthday cakes and things like that. I'd happily jam my sponge then cream a thing. I did that and that was like a conveyor belt of cream cakes and jam cakes. It was very banal.

MoviesOnline: So you could identify?

JAMES MCAVOY: Yeah, I totally can identify. You know, I loved where this character started. It's a silly adventure, action piece of entertainment, but the character starts in a very truthful, sad place. I think he suffers from, he's a proper sufferer of postmodern depression and apathy. I think that’s a condition, man, that's all too evident amongst young men and women, you know, who've got fine lives, not bad, you know, that can't bring themselves to smile or feel better about their horrible existence and I thought that was quite an interesting place for your everyman to start from.

MoviesOnline: What was the hardest stunt to do in Wanted? Was it on the train?

JAMES MCAVOY: The train and the gimbal was quite difficult. The whole vertical stuff and climbing up and all of that. That was quite good fun but difficult. The most difficult thing was probably the car, jumping on the bonnet of the car. It was the most difficult but also the most enjoyable. There's a car coming along at 30 miles an hour and I kind of rendezvous with it in the middle of the road and jump on the bonnet and then it hits the brakes and I go flying off, and then another car smashes into the back. That was all real. There were no wires, there were no mats. I was padded up but that was all real. I can't believe they let me do that because they wouldn't let me jump through a pane of sugar glass window which would scratch my face at most, maybe not even that, and they wouldn't let me do that, but they'd let me jump on a moving vehicle. So beyond anything I could understand and the insurance people were out of their mind I think that day. But I didn't argue with them. I just thought I'd give it a bash. But then just before they'd say action, you are kind of like, "I can't believe they're letting me do this. I'm slightly terrified now."

MoviesOnline: Was it fun for you as an actor to try to find the balance between the drama and dark humor?

JAMES MCAVOY: That was totally fun. I mean, I'm guilty of trying to find the humor in even the most serious of films that I've done and it always gets edited out so it was kind of a joy to be in an environment where the director and producers were saying, "No, no, no, try. You have an idea? Go for it. You want to fall down? Great, cool. There's a rubber chicken over there if you want to get it in the frame. Here's a banana skin."

MoviesOnline: What did the wax bath feel like?

JAMES MCAVOY: Kind of groovy. It was kind of weird. They put a board over me to lock me into the bath so that my hands went through and my head went through but it was flat against me and I couldn't move. That was horrible. I was in there for a couple hours at a time and then they just poured hot wax over the entire thing.

MoviesOnline: Real hot wax?

JAMES MCAVOY: It was real hot wax which it would go over my hands, it would go over my face which was really uncomfortable and it got very, very hot and it went in your ears and stuff. The most annoying thing about it is I got an ear infection for about two weeks because of that hot wax.

MoviesOnline: Have you heard anything about a second series of State of Play?

JAMES MCAVOY: No, I haven't. I mean, we were going to make a second series the year after and it never happened for some reason. Paul got busy doing other things and writing movies I think, stuff like that. Yeah, we wanted to make one immediately and it just never materialized which I was gutted about. The movie then happened and all that kind of stuff. Maybe the movie happening will instigate the BBC wanting to make another series.

MoviesOnline: Were you approached for the movie?

JAMES MCAVOY: I got sent the script and my character was in the script and they were wondering if Bill Nighy and I would be interested in reprising our roles, but they were small parts and they ended up being cut pretty much completely. I think Bill's role's still in it but he's now played by Dame Helen Mirren who I've just worked with really. And my part just had to go because when you take six hours of television and put it down into two hours of film, you just can't investigate the broad range of all the characters you can do with six hours, you know. So it's really just about the three main guys and then you've got a couple of interesting figures surrounding them, like the editor played by Dame Helen.

MoviesOnline: Can you confirm or deny The Hobbit?

JAMES MCAVOY: I can completely deny it. It just seems to have all been rumors.

MoviesOnline: Nobody talked to you?

JAMES MCAVOY: No, not at all. Neither Peter Jackson nor Guillermo Del Toro have got in contact.

MoviesOnline: Would you want to play Bilbo?

JAMES MCAVOY: I think I'd need to see the script first. From what I hear them saying, they don't even have a script. So you'd have to see if you're right for the part, although I'm sure if I was wrong for the part, they wouldn't even bother asking so who knows. We'll see.

MoviesOnline: Are you playing Young Tolstoy in Last Station?

JAMES MCAVOY: No. I'm in The Last Station but I play the secretary, Valentin Fedoravich Bulgako. Tolstoy is played by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren is playing his wife and Paul Giamatti's playing his cohort. It's a bloody brilliant cast.

MoviesOnline: Was there a movie that changed your life when you were young?

JAMES MCAVOY: No, not really. I loved films when I was a kid. I watched a lot of films when I was a kid. We had a VHS video recorder and we used it a lot. But no, I never really considered acting. There's no like glass ceiling that I thought I just can't get through, I can't make it. I just never really considered it a possibility. It was something that happened to other people really. I didn't really think about it. It wasn't until someone gave me a job in a film that I kind of went, "Wow, this is an option? All right. Okay." Then it took me about two or three years to decide yeah, I'll give it a bash and I went to theater school.

MoviesOnline: What’s your greatest fear?

JAMES MCAVOY: Oh god. Uh, The Exorcist. That film really terrifies me. I think it's just the Catholic in me coming out.

MoviesOnline: Are you looking forward to more superhero roles coming your way?

JAMES MCAVOY: No, I don't think so. I hope not. I hope it doesn't become all I get offered. I did this film for a challenge and something different, something new and so hopefully, the next thing I do will be again an example of that and something different, new and challenging. But again, not just different from Wanted, hopefully different from the other stuff I've done as well.

“Wanted” opens in theaters on June 27th.