interview - JAMES McAVOY
He’s a Lover Not a Fighter
Atonement star James McAvoy plays a character so good he had to think of him as a young Gandhi. Unfortunately, in this heart-rending drama bad things happen to good people, like being forced to go to war
By Marni Weisz
Dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, with tousled hair and glassy blue eyes, there’s something very boyish about James McAvoy. But at 28, this Scot has already lived a complicated and challenging life.
Before becoming the star of films like The Last King of Scotland (he played the doctor), Becoming Jane (the love interest) and The Chronicles of Narnia (the faun), McAvoy was raised in a tough part of Glasgow by his grandmother after his parents divorced. His absentee father hasn’t been a part of his life since, something that made director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice) particularly interested in McAvoy when casting his role in Atonement.
McAvoy plays Robbie Turner, a young gardener working at the wealthy Tallis family’s English estate during the lead up to World War Two. The son of the Tallises’ housekeeper, good-hearted Robbie has been raised alongside their children since his father ran off. There’s a lingering attraction between Robbie and Cecilia Tallis (Knightley), which they finally act upon in a scene that’s simultaneously one of the most sensual and awkward in recent screen history, thanks to an unwelcome intrusion by Cecilia’s young sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan).
When it looks as if another young girl staying at the Tallis estate has been raped, Briony — who has a flare for making up stories and now believes Robbie to be a sex fanatic — claims that he was the one responsible. Robbie is sent to jail and only released when he agrees to join the army and go to war, a fight that takes a terrible toll. Cecilia, who knows Robbie is innocent, waits for his return. But it’s the way in which the story is told that has earned the film rave reviews (it opened in the U.K. three months ago). Like the Ian McEwan novel on which it’s based, the movie’s timeline is jumbled, layered and confused, and some things that appear to be true aren’t, other than in the mind of the story’s guilt-ridden narrator, an aging Briony.
McAvoy was at the Toronto International Film Festival when we spoke about the film.
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Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie
(James McAvoy) fight their attraction
to each other in Atonement
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The movie’s back-and-forth timeline leaves the viewer a bit off-balance, did you have the same experience as an actor?
“Not really. Narratively speaking, if you didn’t mess it all up time-wise, it’s a very simple narrative. So, honestly, it was the most beautiful piece of writing I’d ever read for a film.… And what I ended up performing in the film is exactly what I saw the first day that I read it in my kitchen and thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ That sounds quite boring actually, but I can’t tell you how joyous it was to have that because so many things you’re like, ‘F--k, how are we going to fix this?’”
So you’ve had a lot of leeway with your past few scripts?
“I’m not talking about all films. Becoming Jane I had a fair bit of leeway to play around with dialogue, actually. Chronicles of Narnia, less so, but then that was a smaller part. But Last King of Scotland, that was a freefall at times, which was great, that was the nature of it. But I can’t tell you how lovely it is to just go ‘Bang. That’s a mathematical equation of a script.’ All you have to do is put it together.”
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There’s a striking five-and-a-half minute shot that pans the crowded beach at Dunkirk just after Robbie has arrived. How many times did you film that shot?
“We did it three-and-a-half times and we got it on the third time. I think the crew went over two-and-a-half or three weeks before. There was a huge, huge set up, a thousand extras that all needed to be found and clothed and fed and housed and all that rubbish, and we rehearsed for an entire day and then filmed three takes at the end of the day. And that was it.”
Is it a struggle to balance a love story with a war story, in that in one scene you’re pining for your girlfriend and in the next a soldier’s skull is falling apart?
“See, I don’t think it is a love story. It’s a story in which a love story takes place. It’s a story about stories. It’s a story about a woman writing a book and why she writes a book, and part of that is the romantic tragedy that happens in her life that she’s responsible for. But the story is about why she writes the book, really, I think. I just find it very easy to make that go back and forth.”
You told The Guardian about Robbie, “I love him dearly, I wish I was him, I wish he existed.” Why such strong feelings for this character?
“Because he’s an incredible person, he’s almost saintly. I imagine that it’s people like him who go on to be the Mother Teresas of this world and the Gandhis of this world.”
Joe Wright has said he wanted you because your background is similar to your character’s. Did he discuss that with you?
“I remember we were having a chat the first time I auditioned and him saying, ‘How does it feel being you and being from the background you’re from and having all this success and getting all these films?’ And I didn’t realize that he was trying to make a connection to this character but that must have been what it was about. We had a bit of a long conversation about it all and [he asked], ‘Is it scary? Do you feel like you’re dealing with people that could ultimately take advantage of you?’ But, yeah, we do share some of that background, we share some of the relationships with our fathers and I think that’s important.”
Do you think that your similar experiences explain why you “love him dearly?”
“I think I said that because if we were all more like Robbie Turner there would be no wars, and there would be nothing but love, because that’s all he’s got for the world to begin with.”
Is that realistic? Is there anyone out there who’s really that good?
“I f--king hope so! F--king hope so! I found it difficult to play to begin with because I didn’t believe that he existed…. That’s the way he’s drawn and it’s my job to play him that way. And I think that until I believed in the possibility of someone that good and their existence I couldn’t play the character very well, it took me a couple of weeks.”
You won something called the “Revelation Award” at Cannes this year. What is that?
“Do you know what was really weird about that? I had no idea, and I’ve received no award, and nobody told me anything, and I find out two weeks later.”
So you weren’t even there?
“No, I’ve never been to Cannes. It’s very strange. Very strange. So I have no idea what that was about. It was very nice of them, if in fact I did win some award.”
You wanted to be a missionary or a priest when you were young. Are you very religious?
“Not anymore.”
But you were back then?
“Yeah, I suppose I was.”
You’ve also said you wanted to join the navy to travel the world. Is travel part of the reason you wanted to be a missionary, too?
“Yes, they were both for travel.”
So acting has fulfilled that desire — you shot The Last King of Scotland in Uganda, The Chronicles of Narnia in New Zealand and you just finished shooting Wanted, an action pic with Angelina Jolie, in the Czech Republic.
“Yeah, acting ended up being a much better way to fulfill my wanderlust, but I think the priest thing and the navy thing were just ways of getting out, ways of escaping. The priest thing, I think most young Catholic boys entertain notions of doing that. And I wasn’t particularly serious. So yeah, acting was definitely the right choice.”