"I am in!" X-Men's James McAvoy on Jennifer Lawrence, Benedict Cumberbatch and becoming Professor X.

[Music] so let's go back to the lion the witch and the wardrobe over 10 years ago yep how does that feel uh aging and liberating actually as well because i suppose when you play something like mr dumbness that is you're dead grateful and you think it's brilliant and also you know i loved that character when i was growing up if you don't mind my asking what are you i'm a thorn and what about you you must be some kind of beardless dwarf i'm not a dwarf i'm a girl you're gonna go like all right so i'm gonna be playing this kind of person that's the kind of actor i am and then you look back and ten years later you've rarely had to play the same kind of character more than once or twice so i feel really lucky as well as well as it making me feel really old the fallen stereotype hasn't hit home no i i managed to get away from being trapped in uh playing the horny goat when i was younger at school i saw that movie and as i was watching it i went oh no because i walked out and went everyone's going to call me mr steven you've got a better toughness going on i'm sorry please allow me to introduce myself my name is thomas pleased to meet mrs homness it was a nightmare i watched it going have you ever tried to kidnap an eight-year-old girl hang on let me think no no nice man you're probably doing all right now i'm fine but i've got to ask about that makeup process because yeah back in the day i guess it wasn't that quick getting the ears right yeah no it was all right actually there was a lot of cgi back in that time even but it was all hand-laid hair it wasn't like a wig piece all over my body wasn't a suit it was sort of like labor intensive five bits of hair glued onto me at a time and then curled and beautifully sort of uh hair dried by hair dryers and uh yeah it was long it's like three and a half hours but there's worse things you know i mean i think oscar in x-men apocalypse he's he beats it hands down it was like five five and a half hours for him or something real mature also jennifer lawrence is mystique i mean that can't be fun blue you're my oldest friend i'm your only friend yeah i think it's got they've gotten that down i think it was maybe something like eight hours six years ago and it's down to sort of 90 minutes now i think please don't tell her it's 90 minutes if it's not in which case she's going to come in and kick my head in after all of this it's like are you kidding i'm not taking this off what do you think you learned from watching benedict cumberbatch do a slap attack on dominic cooper in start of a tent and if you've got something to say to me you say it to my face all right oh yeah of course the windmill what did i learn from bunny boy uh the grotesque is funny the you can be a serious actor and you can be a funny actor at the same time excuse me but we're trying to do a quiz here and it's against the clock it's gonna be done sometime this man has been sent from the offices of university challenge was staff attend which is a movie that i think it's impossible not to like it's what i think so and nobody watched it at the time it's one of the best reviewed movies i've ever been in and nobody went to see it at the cinema that's i know it's also full of people that have gone to amazing things including yourself james corden casually in that one you're not going to turn into a wanker are you what rebecca hall alice eve the list goes on i know that's not an alcoholic beverage in your hand though but yeah it was a really good time and the fact that we've all gone on to do great things since is secondary to the fact that we all felt really close and and together and you know you don't get that look we've got it on x-men but that's probably the two major times i've had it that strongly you know let me help with that i'm all right i'm all right i'm all right it's interesting you went from just coincidentally went from atonement and then quite soon afterwards there's wanted which is just an entirely different film i always remember on a tournament doing a scene with briony uh with cersa when she i think pretends to be drowning and i have to jump in and i had to run about and jump in and be all sort of dashing and savour [Applause] and joe was like hey you're quite good at that you should do an action movie and that day i got called up for my agent saying hey so this thing wanted have you read it and i was like oh yeah what's that all about she's like yeah they want you to do it uh look the liquor is just over there so father was one of the greatest assassins who ever lived the man who killed him is behind you how was it pitched to you because i i would like to think they go right it is utterly bonkers it's a slow motion action uh and it's got angelina jolie in it are you up for it it didn't have angelina in it when i signed on she already signed on after you signed up you know what i'm saying yeah oh hello it wasn't pitched to me really not at all i think they just thought you'd be lucky if he gets it so they don't have to pitch it to you then you know what was it like to shoot alongside angelina jolie when you have that train scene for example will you you have to do all the kind of gun play was there a moment going is this really happening am i actually doing this yeah no totally you had a lot of those moments and i think i'd probably appreciate them even more now simply because i find that certainly when i got to about 28 29 i started to just chill out and sit back and kind of and be in the moment much more as a person but as a performer also and uh and i've enjoyed it a lot more soon just because there's not a war doesn't mean there's peace you want to teach your kids something teach them that teach them to fight otherwise you might as well live in this house for the rest of their lives you still sound just like him you sound just like eric that's why i'm here he's resurfaced tell me you're offered the role you get given the role or you audition for the role of professor x how much of a weight is there on you to live up to patrick stewart's legacy i feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul not too much really i was again i was really fortunate i just got offered the room true chromium a gentleman would at least offered to buy me a drink first they said you'd look great bald in three movies time yeah in six years time i was surprised that they were offering charles to me but i i thought whatever i'm doing it um whatever i am doing whatever i'm doing it's filming 40 minutes from my house it's goodbye coming i often remember my agent because i my agent wasn't sent the script nobody was sent the script i had to go to a i think i went to a vapiano to read it i don't know why we're in a vapiano other mid-range italian restaurants are available yep and the director and the director's assistant was in there and so i sat down and read the script and it was 40 pages of it and i was like where's where's the rest and they're like that's all we've got right now but i was just so keen to play charles and also the first 40 pages for charles were really really good it was really fun and exciting and i thought i could really amp that up and go much further with it and take him like all that stuff where he's drinking in the barn or we could really go for it make him a bit womanizing a bit like in love with himself and all that mutant and proud hey i guess i have to buy my own drink so i remember phoning my agent his friend what was it like and i went it's brilliant it is brilliant instrument does it does it hold your attention all the way through and i went to the very last page i am and i've told her that since but i was just i just thought you know it's charles xavier i won't stop you leaving i could [Music] i won't and i'd love that character growing up i'd also been a huge fan of patrick's from dune to star trek to into the original x-men movies in 2000 so there's a lot of baggage and legacy there for me to take into it but me personally as a performer separated from how i felt about all that history i was excited by the fact that i was getting to go in and do something very different from patrick and subvert what the audience regarded as a charles xavier type of character and i got to do the first movie i was really lucky to do that massively in the second movie [Music] and then in this one the new acting challenge for me is owning that archetype and owning that icon um and that's the new thing for me now how long was the conversation i know in blockbusters everything gets talked about how long is the conversation deciding how you're gonna do the temple touch no there was no conversation i just did it you just didn't just felt it i just thought i always felt i didn't want to be doing a hard stare you know and so i thought i wanted to do something that physicalized it and helped the audience realize what i was up to that didn't involve me just frowning a lot this comes back they all come back and also there's president in the comic books as well i always think physicalizing things is more interesting than just a close-up of a guy looking vaguely blank uh vaguely blank or specifically black um uh so that i was into that but now now charles is so much more powerful doesn't have to touch his head he's that good he's other people he'd do that for him um uh yeah so it was uh yeah it was just i'm always looking to physicalize things and it's why i love i i i want to if we go forward and do more it's why i wanted to make sure he had a manual wheelchair at times as well because i didn't want him to just be this like entitled rich dude that was like flying about in the hover chair although that would be awesome fox simon kimberg anybody that's writing it flying chair would be awesome power suit that'd be cool too but i wanted him to have a manual wheelchair because a part of you know one of the things i love about playing charles as well is that you're playing somebody who is significantly physically disabled and he's a superhero and we need to own that and explore that a little bit so we explore it a tiny bit and it works thank you so much thank you cheers thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe and click the bell icon to keep up to date you can listen to my radio on movies and tv podcast screen time on bbc sounds and you can find these interviews in full on bbc iplayer by searching movies with ali plum

Channel: BBC Radio 1

Views: 209,316

Keywords: james mcavoy, james macavoy, xmen, x-men, ali plumb, ali plumb interview, james mcavoy interview, first class, days of future past, apocalypse, dark phoenix, starter for 10, narnia, the lion the witch and the wardrobe, mr tumnus, wanted, atonement, saoirse ronan, alice eve, angelina jolie, benedict cumberbatch, jennifer lawrence, dominic cooper, oscar isaac, marvel, MCU, patrick stewart

Id: ya1VusuLCwU

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021