Actor James McAvoy talks Christmas

James McAvoy has a bone to pick with Santa.

“For two Christmases in a row, I asked Santa for a real fighter jet,” says the Scotland native. “Let’s just say that disappointment set in when nothing of the sort arrived under my tree.”

You almost hate to ask the 32-year-old star of the recent “X-Men” reboot exactly how old he was when he asked Santa for such a lavish gift.

“OK, I was 31 at the time, but you’re supposed to be able to ask for anything,” he says during a phone interview from London.

McAvoy isn’t finding any coal this holiday season. He stars in “Arthur Christmas,” where he voices the role of Santa’s geek son, who finds out that one child was skipped on Santa’s delivery route.

Despite the fact that Santa (Jim Broadbent) is too tired and wants to call it a night, Arthur sets out on a quest with his grandfather, a retired Santa, and a gift-wrapping girl elf to set it right and deliver a little girl’s bike. Bill Nighy voices Grandsanta and Hugh Laurie is Arthur’s hotshot brother Steve, a young man who wants to inherit the Santa job.

Other star voices include Eva Longoria, Robbie Coltrane and Joan Cusack.

McAvoy says he embraced poor, misunderstood Arthur who’s relegated to answering Christmas letters and doesn’t do any Santa duties.

“I loved that Arthur represents many kids in a way. He’s an outsider in his own family,” he says.

“This is quite a poignant and sophisticated tale about a kid who is looking in when it comes to his own family. I guess all of us have had that feeling of not really belonging,” he says.

He also cheered Arthur’s “get all the presents out there or else” attitude.

“He is Christmas integrity,” McAvoy says. “In the movie, his brother Steve has automated Christmas. Santa has a spaceship and not a sled. Computers run the entire holiday. Arthur is fighting for a real, old-fashioned Christmas spirit. Christmas is not just a business to him.”

McAvoy, who voiced Gnomeo in the recent “Gnomeo & Juliet” and played a young Charles Xavier in “X-Men: First Class” (2011), says that doing animation was a nice break from action fare.

“I’m used to being on a set for 15 hours a day. With animation, you breeze into the studio and you’re there for four hours. You get to be an idiot and you play.”

McAvoy still remembers when he heard “rumors” that Santa might not exist.

“I was six or seven and I was quite devastated,” he recalls. “Santa is the first great hero you have as a child and it’s horrible when someone shatters that belief ... You start to think that everyone is lying to you.”

He also has wonderful holiday memories. “I remember one year, I got a BMX bike that I know my mom couldn’t afford. I didn’t expect it, and now it just touches me that she saved up,” he says.

McAvoy was raised in Glasgow by his grandparents after his father, a roofer, left the family when he was a little boy. He thought about joining the priesthood, but that changed when he was 16 and actor David Hayman visited his school.

“Basically, at the end of his talk, I said, ‘Thanks very much,’” he recalls. “Six months later, he phoned up my high school and asked me to audition for one of his movies.

“He asked, ‘Can you make yourself cry?’ I said yes and got the part [in ‘The Near Room’],” he marvels.

After a stint with the Royal Navy, McAvoy studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Some of his films include “Wimbledon” (2004), “The Chronicles of Narnia” (2005), “The Last King of Scotland” (2006), “Becoming Jane” (2007), “Wanted” (2008) and “The Last Station” (2009). He played the fate-cursed Robbie Turner in the critically acclaimed film “Atonement” (2007).

He stars for director Danny Boyle in the upcoming film “Trance,” about a botched art heist that has two men colliding over money and a woman. Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson also star.

McAvoy is married to actress Anne-Marie Duff (“Enigma”) and they have a son named Brendan, 1.

He says it’s tricky balancing work and home life in London.

“I just took a few months off because you have to make sure you’re still paying attention to your own life,” he says.

Holidays at the McAvoy house feature “lots of food, cheap chocolate and bad TV.”

Why bad chocolate and not the good stuff?

“Cheap chocolate is best,” he says. “When you’re stuffing your face, this is no time for quality.”

Big Picture News Inc.

Chicago Sun Times


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