Who is James McAvoy?

I had no idea who James McAvoy was so I took a peak at a James McAvoy pic then thought I'd do a little interdigging to find out the whats and wheres of this who. It seems he's another fine Scottish actor who's relatively new in the public eye. He's been in a few films, some rather well known films, but his is a name that isn't thrown around as much as some of the other Hollywood somebodies who we're told to like.

McAvoy's new film, Wanted, seems rooted as Fight Club and The Matrix were. An “apathetic nobody” who gets thrown into some crazy ass shtuff, he gets pulled from his dull and safe life and thrown into a world of crazyness where the value of someone's being is dependent on how those other than the commonly understood as authorities see fit. If anything, this film seems to at least have more of a sense of humour than what those Watchkowski bros came up with and looks to be full of summer fun.

But who is this McAvoy guy? He was in that Narnia movie a few years back, last year he played opposite that British chick who seems to have a problem with her protruding jaw and he's up for The Hobbit whenever that gets made. It seems that each film that's a James McAvoy pic is a very careful one but in reality it seems that he's just been lucky enough to get roles in films that ended up being really quite good. It's interesting to see an actor make decisions based on needing work and having those films end up being very good for his career rather than it being a situation like one of those guys you see who seem to pop up in every piece of garbage in the Zellers discount bin. Needless to say, I doubt McAvoy will be in the sequel to Leprechaun in Space any time soon.

It's easy to surf the net and find opinion pieces on various actors, what some dude thinks about any given celebrity, what he thinks they should do in the future, why he thinks a certain someone did a certain something, but, oddly enough, it's often much more gratifying to read what that somebody has to say themselves. So far McAvoy seems to be a pretty down to earth guy. Much like Anthony Hopkins, who once said that there's nothing special or magical about his acting, he reads the lines and gets paid a large sum of money, James one stated that he “always believed that [he] never wanted to be an actor. [He] only did it because [he] was allowed to do it and [he] had to do something.” Is there anything more refreshing than that?

“I talk about this a lot when people ask me about my favorite films and things, and I try to be as honest as possible, but it is The Goonies. I did watch The Goonies a lot.” C'mon, how can you not love an answer like that? If he's been taking on roles that he just happens to audition for and win, I'm curious to see what he chooses to be in when he reaches that moment in his career when filmmakers offer him roles and he has the luxury to say 'yay' or 'nay nay'.