The Scottish actor went from making eyes at Keira Knightley to toting a semiautomatic pistol and making out with Angelina Jolie. Not a bad year. Standing in the urban equivalent of a clearing in the woods, surrounded by squat stone buildings and haloed by an enormous Kmart sign, James McAvoy looks like an extra from a production of Oliver in need of a Grande latte. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing a newsboy cap pulled down over his ears. Or that it’s one of those Dickensian days in New York when smoke-colored clouds spray a steady shower of cold rain […]

In this exclusive interview, the reluctant sex symbol talks about the physical challenges of his first slick action flick, why period dramas and blockbusters aren’t really all that different, and what it’s like working with Angelina. Calling James McAvoy a “hot Scot” probably won’t impress the Glasgow-born Wanted star, who is far more comfortable chatting about football games with friends in British pubs than he is pondering any presumed international sex appeal. “It’s completely something I brush off and laugh at,” says McAvoy with a melodious Scottish brogue, pushing a hand through his brown shaggy hair. “It’s not something that […]

With his role opposite Keira Knightley, the Scottish actor solidifies his place as lead actor. In this adaptation of the book, McAvoy plays Robbie Turner, the son of a housekeeper who has grown up on the sprawling Tallis family estate in rural Surrey, England. Robbie is caught between classes. Courtesy of his mother’s employer, he has obtained a Cambridge education. But while he is invited into the Tallis family circle on certain social occasions, he will never be included in the esteemed echelons of the British aristocracy. Then on a sweltering summer’s day in 1934, 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) […]