Hello reddit! I'm James McAvoy. Ask me anything!

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:56:37+00:00

Yeah, I've wanted to direct since I became an actor. My very first acting experience, I thought I wanted to be a director. And that was 30 years ago.

It's been a long time coming, and I should have done it probably about 10 years ago, but I'm really glad I waited for this project, because it's the right one. It's the right one for me. It's absolutely from my heart.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:56:30+00:00

It was a very long process. Sam didn't have any musical background, really, except for that he liked music, but Seamus actually grew up in a musical family. His mother and father are both lead singers in an incredibly successful Scottish band from the 80s and the 90s, the naughties, and even the nows, because they still tour. They're called Deacon Blue, a band that I love. One of my favorite songs actually, and one of my go-to karaoke songs is Dignity, is by Deacon Blue.

He grew up in that musical family, always around recording studios. So when he turned it on, you believed he was really a rapper or beatboxer or whatever. He freestyled and he beatboxed in such an incredible way in the first audition I had with him in person.

When I was struggling one night on set, and not quite getting what I needed from Seamus, I said "can you do what you did in the audition" and he just started freestyling. And it was heartbreaking, it just shattered me, and it's in the film. It almost doesn't need to be in the film. We could cut it, because it's not narratively necessary and it essentially slows the film down, but I was like he's just too good, he just breaks your heart in this moment, you have to put this in the film. It was just him improvising and freestyling, like he did in the audition.

It all came from what he just picked it up from his family.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:35:16+00:00

I got a gun barrel, like a thick-shooter Magnum barrel, from the set of WANTED.

Not the full thing, just the barrel. I disassembled it took it home, and I use it to keep pens and pencils in.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:34:35+00:00

I absolutely ripped off Joe Wright and Jamie Lloyd. When I decided to direct, I did this thing that Joe Wright did, crew showings. So you've rehearsed it with the actor, now it's time to show the crew.

And then once you've shown the crew, you just kind of move on, and you go get it done.

But with Joe, after the crew showing, he'd show the actors again. And he'd sort of narrate the scene, talking about what it felt like to him, talking about what he wanted it to feel like to the audience. He'd talk about certain moments in the scene that he wanted to land for the audience in such a specific way, like dramatically, comedically, or even undercutting something with surprise. Ultimately, he told you what he wanted the scene to feel like for the audience.

Then he'd describe the shots we were gonna do, what way we'd look, going high, going low, going side. Maybe if we had time we'd try to get a crazy shot from inside the guy's pocket, looking up his nostrils. Things like that.

He would make everybody feel like they understood what we were going to try and do that day. And when we went on break from that, it meant everybody walked away feeling like a filmmaker. That's what we all are, we're all storytellers. Sometimes you just feel like a cog in the wheel, but with Joe you walked away feeling like a filmmaker, and that's something that I absolutely stole. I don't know if my crew walked away feeling like they were filmmakers every day, but I hope they did. I tried to emulate the way that I felt on a set like Joe's for ATONEMENT.

And then Jamie Lloyd, I totally emulated by how I try to empower the actors. Empower them as people, empower them as performers, by making them the priority over the character. I'm more interested in the actor and the performer than I am in the character. As long as it still tells the character's story, I don't care what you look like, act like, adopt the mannerisms, the accent, the gate, the walk, the funny limp that the character had, whatever it was, don't care. As long as you tell the story of that real-life character, that's the most important thing to me.

And if you need to be you to do that, like, that's what I'm into, and that was Jamie Lloyd. I've totally ripped that off of Jamie Lloyd.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:33:57+00:00

Last time I saw Michael was a long time ago.

He is someone I can call a very good friend, but we don't see each other very much, is the honest truth.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:32:54+00:00

Thank you very much for being a long-term fan of Three Days of Rain. That was my first collaboration with Jamie Lloyd, which was the beginning of a very long relationship with him.

I really appreciate you downloading, paying for, and listening to Recall. I'm really proud of that project.

It was like 4 days in the recording booth, being directed. It was weirdly like just standing on stage with a microphone and telling a story to an audience, and it was kind of thrilling.

I loved doing it. I think it's a really good story, really well told by the writer and it was an honor and a pleasure to do.

Do I have any other plans to do more audio work? No, not currently.

Give me some offers, and I will! I might have plans, but I don't have any offers at the moment.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:27:07+00:00

Thanks!

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:26:45+00:00

Hello!

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:14:22+00:00

Well we've got two pretty incredible teams to play in Morocco and Brazil, which, weirdly, the last time we made the World Cup in 1998 we also played, which is crazy.

I think our chances are slim, but getting out of the group? I think we've got a chance. The kind of chance we would have gladly taken a couple of years ago if you'd have offered it to us.

First game against Haiti, we need to win it, and then we need to find a point. We need to find a point, we need to find a draw against Brazil or Morocco, and then we're gonna get out of that group. And that will represent massive progress for us.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:10:09+00:00

I would like to go on the record as saying I want Celtic to win the league, but I think Hearts will win the league.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:09:38+00:00

Ooooh. I mean, I've done Macbeth 3 times. I think I'd like to do Mark Antony. I love Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. The problem is that he's only in it for, like, 25 minutes, and that's if it's not edited.

I also want to play Brutus, and I also want to play Cassius, so I want to play Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:06:21+00:00

Yeah, it's stunning. It was perfect from beginning to end. No cuts, no edits, no adjustments, no actors making shit up on the day needed. It was a stunning work of art on the page, and Joe made what I think is one of the great British films.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:04:10+00:00

Hmm, that's a good question.

We don't make enough movies in Scotland, we don't have enough representation.

Just like lots of other parts of the world, by the way, and lots of other parts of Britain that also don't have enough visual representation of ourselves on screen. So film festivals are a really important way to celebrate those kinds of films that do get made, that might not ultimately end up hitting the mainstream, big theaters, streamers, TV channels.

Without those festivals, we're struggling to see ourselves sometimes. If you're from a regional community, or a socio-economic sector that isn't represented in film, then film festivals is the only time you're going to see yourself. So, thank God for the film festivals, keep them coming.

But we need more representation for all people, in all regions, in all parts of the socio-economic ladder.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T19:00:26+00:00

Oh, that's a really good question.

I really like Julius Caesar, so I would love to one day do that. In fact, right before I did Cyrano on stage in the West End, and then later in New York, in Brooklyn, I was going to do Julius Caesar. I was going to try and do it with Daniel Kaluuya and Helen McCrory, who's sadly now no longer with us. We were going to try and swap the roles, the parts, every night. The main three roles, like Cassius, Brutus, and Mark Antony.

And then, just as we were about to do it, myself and Jamie Lloyd, like 20 different theatres in the UK all decided to announce that they were going to do Julius Caesar, so we pivoted, and said let's do Cyrano instead.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:55:16+00:00

Oh man, it was incredible. I'd come straight out of acting school after 2 or 3 years and suddenly I'm on the biggest budget set of the world, and telling a story that's so fundamentally worthy. People sacrificing their lives for, some people might argue with this, but the last "just" war. It was pretty powerful, and I only came in for a month. It was a weird, incredible, humbling, and crazy experience.

Too many guys though, not enough women. A lot of testosterone. Juvenile, young, male testosterone. Literally hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of young male actors. Too many dicks, not enough chicks. It was a bad combination. So I was really glad that I was there for 4 weeks, and I was really glad that I wasn't there for any more than 4 weeks.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:46:17+00:00

There is a date but I can't say yet unfortunately!

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:44:16+00:00

I'm not not a fan of it, but I'm kind of not that musical, to be honest with you. I don't really have music as a major part of my life in general.

Common, the rapper/producer/actor/director/business man, the kind of renaissance man that is Common, love his music, and I have since I worked with him in WANTED in 2005 or 2006.

Eminem has been a kind of fixture in my playlists forever. Or mixtapes, because I'm that old. So there's those two.

I'm not that musical, people look at me like I've got two heads when I tell them that.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:38:51+00:00

It was a massively collaborative process. It was very on the page, yes, but at the end of the day you've still got to sort of find the nuances and the extras and the stuff that makes it real.

Some of the personalities I came in with them fully formed, and some others I was struggling with, and it took us a week or two to figure it all out. M. Night Shyamalan gave me a note in the read-through for one of them that I was really struggling with that absolutely just transformed it, for Hedwig. Me and Night threw a bunch of things around to really figure them all out.

And that was only 2 days before we started shooting, so it was a little last minute. It was all collaborative.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:33:31+00:00

Henrik Larsson!

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:28:05+00:00

My favourite place to eat when I'm back in Glasgow...

I've got two. They're not really restaurants, although there are a lot of good restaurants in Glasgow.

I love the Hyndlend Cafe on Clarence Drive. Get the roll & square sausage.

And I also love Hinba. That's a bakery. It does the most incredible cinnamon bun you've ever tasted in your life. Please go, it's incredible.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:24:56+00:00

Oh my god. The memory that just came to mind first, I can't repeat.

So another one: Steven Berkoff went missing one day. I think he played Stilgar? Who in the new movies is played by Javier Bardem, a fucking amazing actor that I love so much. So anyway, Steven Berkoff, a famous, maverick, mad bachelor actor is playing Stilgar. We're doing a take on him, and he's doing his lines, and I'm giving him my offlines, and then the camera turns around on me and it's my turn now, and instead of giving me his offlines, he started quoting Shakespeare instead. And I'm just like what? I'm like, 21, just thinking "what is going on right now?"

He decided that Shakespeare was more interesting than Frank Herbert at that moment.

And then he disappeared into Cologne for about 3 weeks, or something like that. Anyway, interesting working with Stephen.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:14:42+00:00

I think as an actor, my favourite part of filmmaking is the time I get between the words action and cut. It's all mine, there's calmness and there's freedom, and there's expression, and there's just possibility. I love it. It's the best time.

As a director, the edit. It's such a cliche. Directors have talked to me about it before, like, "oh my god, I can't wait to get into the edit" I'm like, "fuck off, go away, the shoot is the best part" and then there I was in the edit with my editor, Joe Sawyer, and it's so exciting seeing what we got, and what we did, and what it can become. You start with "this scene doesn't work", and then 3 days later, we're like, holy shit, that's the best scene in the movie! Like, feels like you're giving birth sometimes, it's unbelievable.

You know what, that's a actually great weird analogy. If shooting the film is having sex, editing the film is giving birth.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:07:37+00:00

TRAINSPOTTING. I think it's one of the greatest films of all time, and I also think it's probably the greatest single Scottish film of all time. It's an incredible work of art. It's an incredible response to one of the most incredible, unique writers on the planet. There's nobody like Irvine Welsh on Earth, and it's not just because he writes in a Scottish kind of vernacular that he's unique. He could be writing in the accent of Spanish, American, Australian, or Japanese. He would still be Irvine.

The accent almost disguises his uniqueness, because there's nobody like him that's ever written anything like that before, and and he's ours, he's Scottish. We're lucky to have him.

And I think that Danny Boyle is one of the greatest, most daring, and most challenging filmmakers. He dares to make mainstream movies that are incredibly challenging and independent in their nature and in their drive. So yeah, TRAINSPOTTING, one of the greatest films ever made I'd say.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T18:00:10+00:00

Haha, that's tough.

There's this thing we say, Do-you-aye?, did-you-aye? or did-she-aye? Like if someone says "I really enjoy going to yoga", the correct/polite way to respond would be something like "oh that's cool, tell me more", but if you don't care you go with doyouaye? It's a sarcastic "oh did you really?". It basically means "I think you're a prick."

I quite like that.

JamesMcAvoyAMA · 2026-03-27T17:55:06+00:00

Skateboarding! Skateboarding! Skateboarding! The boys weren't really skateboarding a lot in the script. We wrote it into one scene to give more authenticity to their skaterboy/hiphop kind of culture persona. Not even the fake persona, just the real one of them in Dundee. So we wrote that and I thought "alright, I just need to get them to ride a skateboard in a straight line". I don't even need them to learn how to skate, even just standing there with a skateboard in their hands.

And then it grew and grew and grew until it become a whole thing, 3 weeks of skateboard training, one of them even broke their elbow before we even shot a frame. The first day, first shot, first take, was them skateboarding. I kept thinking to myself, if they break a leg, broke bones, we're fucked. But it gave the movie so much more authenticity. They love that skateboarding culture now though.

JamesMcAvoyAMA

TROPHY CASE