Poor old James McAvoy. He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. As we trudge along a road in north London in search of a cafe, he explains how, in the previous week, he’s travelled from New Zealand to London to Manchester to Cornwall to Manchester to the Peak District to London to Edinburgh and back to London again. This afternoon, he must return to Manchester, to shoot more scenes for the second series of Channel 4’ s Shameless. The day after tomorrow, he’s off to New Zealand again. There are jaunts to LA to be shoehorned in when the opportunity arises. “I’m spending my life...” He pauses. “It’s kinda busy at the moment.”
McAvoy concedes that the Cornwall visit, for a spot of surfing, was strictly leisure. But the rest, he says, is all work, with New Zealand looming largest. It’s there he’s been shooting The Chronicles of Narnia, the cast-of-thousands version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which he plays Mr Tumnus, the fawn (or “the Thorn”, as it’s been appearing on thicko websites). He jumps up and tries to illustrate how his bottom, goat half will be added digitally.
These are interesting times for the 25-year-old Glaswegian. McAvoy can currently be seen in Working Title’s tennis romcom, Wimbledon. It’s only a small role, as Paul Bettany’s younger brother, but a head of steam is building. The same company’s smaller, indie-flavoured Inside I’m Dancing, in which McAvoy stars, recently scooped the audience award at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Set in Dublin, it sees McAvoy as Rory, a young man incapacitated with muscular dystrophy who, along with a similarly wheelchair-bound buddy (Steven Robertson), decides to make a bid for freedom from their institution and set up in the outside world. Rather than a worthy take on the plight of the disabled, the film is a bittersweet comedy, with Rory as the mouthy rebel. “He’s so begging for a punch,” he says. “But you like him.”
Inevitably, parallels have been drawn both with One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and My Left Foot. But they’re barking up the wrong tree, McAvoy says. “People kept saying, ‘So, you’re gonna do a Daniel Day-Lewis? You’re going to be in character the whole time? You’re gonna be in a wheelchair the whole time? You want them to carry you onto the set?’ To which me and Steven said, ‘Eff off.’”
Performing a role in which he could move only his head and a couple of fingers was quite a stretch, and he details the extensive research he undertook with genuine sufferers to ensure verisimilitude. “It is a fun movie, but we still tried to make it real,” he says. “By the very fact that we had able-bodied actors playing disabled people, it meant we were fiercely intent on making it as real as we could, because we have a duty not to offend people... I’ m sure we’re still gonna offend people anyway.” The film has already aroused controversy with some disabled groups, unimpressed that the lead roles didn’t go to actual disabled actors, and citing other movies, such as the recent After Life, that have already made great leaps in this direction. Is it the same as having white actors prance about in blackface, as some critics allege? McAvoy gets rather animated. “People keep saying to me, ‘Why didn’t you get a disabled actor to play Rory?’ First of all, why don’t you get someone with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to play Rory? Otherwise your argument’s completely invalid,” he says. “Duchenne muscular dystrophy (the virulent strain from which Rory suffers) gives a very short life expectancy, anything between 17 and 20 years. Where are you going to find an actor with experience who can convey this person? Someone with Duchenne muscular dystrophy might have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but are they Rory? The defining aspect of Rory isn’t his condition, it’s his psyche, his soul. To say you would have a better chance of finding Rory among the disabled community is forgetting what storytelling’s all about.” McAvoy had a heated discussion with one Dublin naysayer: “She never seemed to mind that I wasn’t Irish,” he notes, though he wishes the argument were that facile. The bottom line is whether the film portrays the dis- abled community in a bad light, which it certainly doesn’t. “Groups I’ve worked with seem to really like it, and think it’s a really good, positive portrayal of the disabled community,” he insists.
The film couldn’t be further from Shameless, in which McAvoy plays a southern wheeler-dealer interloper in the world of the Manchester sink-estate dwellers the Galla- ghers. While the series means a lot to him — and is also where he met his on-screen and now real-life girlfriend, Anne-Marie Duff — he has finished his commitment to it. After wrapping up the second series and a Christmas special, he won’t be returning. “I’ve never done more than a three-month stint on anything,” he says.
McAvoy’s path into acting was not born of hell-bent desire. While classmates at his Drumchapel school were one day barracking a visiting film director, David Hayman, “calling him a big poof”, McAvoy found himself quite drawn, regaled with stories of how Hayman had once met Arnold Schwarzenegger. A few months later, McAvoy bagged a part in Hayman’s amateurs-only film The Near Room (1995). He never thought it was anything other than a one-off gig, but a lack of other options led him to drama college and the Royal Scottish Academy. “I got into it just because I didn’t know what else to do, and I enjoyed it.” Stage work (such as Privates on Parade) led to television and movie work, including Band of Brothers, White Teeth, the acclaimed State of Play and then films like Bright Young Things. In the latter two, interestingly, he played gentlemen of the fourth estate. “It was nice to see journalists in a more positive light,” he sniggers.
Meetings in LA have tended to place him in the same bracket as British up-and-comers like Orlando Bloom. “Hi, how’s it going? I’m James,” he mocks, imitating the working of a room, though he hints that the meetings have already yielded potential gigs. Meanwhile, Narnia beckons. He’s already signed up for the sequel, Prince Caspian, no doubt hoping the franchise will be a Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It will daresay make a few more bob than the low-budget BBC series that ran in 1988. It will be a lot darker, he says. “When I tell people I’m playing Mr Tumnus, they go, ‘Oh, he’s so cute.’ Yes, but let’s not forget he’s trying to kidnap Lucy, kidnap her and hand her over to the White Witch. He’s a hairy goat inviting a nine-year-old back to his flat for toast and sardines. CS Lewis was writing it for his goddaughter. I think he was trying to warn her.”
Inside I’m Dancing opens on October 15
Don’t miss the trailer for Inside I’m Dancing on October’s The Month CD-Rom
