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Basically, every character I've ever played, I've based entirely on internal conflict. And I love doing that, because I think it's very human.

James McAvoy

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James McAvoy
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: April 21
Actor
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Television Presenter
Voice Actor
Glasgow
Scotland
James Andrew McAvoy
Ever
Internals
Human
Internal
Humans
Entirely
Every
Basically
Love
Played
Think
Conflict
Thinking
Based
Character

More quotes by James McAvoy

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I really liked 'Starter For Ten' because I grew up watching 1980s teen films like 'St. Elmo's Fire' and 'The Breakfast Club' and I've always wanted to play the underdog lead hero in a 1980s-inspired film.
James McAvoy
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If you don't have the good fortune to work a lot then you take any job you get offered, whether it's a good job, fun job, a bad job, horrible job, whatever, you just take what you need to take. But I'm lucky in that - at the moment anyway and hopefully forever, but who knows - I get the chance to pick jobs for the kick of it and the fun.
James McAvoy
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It's quite liberating to have a director stand beside the camera and say: Do this now, and do that now... It's also a bit sordid but it liberates an actor, I think.
James McAvoy
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Because technically actors are just public servants really. They just tell stories because people need to be told stories. That's all it is. And yet we get treated as though we're important.
James McAvoy
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I'm probably more dangerous in a car than I am on a motorbike on a bike I'm very mindful of the fact that if you make a mistake you're dead.
James McAvoy
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I'm 5 foot 7, and I've got pasty white skin. I don't think I'm ugly, don't get me wrong, but I'm not your classic lead man, Brad Pitt guy.
James McAvoy
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I'd like to have stayed in the Scouts beyond the age of 12.
James McAvoy
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That's the main thing that attracts me - characters who have big journeys. I like playing those people.
James McAvoy
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I don't know why I get cast in a lot of period pieces. Stephen Fry told me that I had a face for period, that I look like someone from 1920.
James McAvoy
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At the heart of every really good Christmas movie is the threat, I suppose, to Christmas. Something is wrong with Christmas, in all of these movies. In 'The Polar Express,' there's a kid that doesn't really believe, and that's the threat to Christmas. In 'Santa Claus: The Movie,' jealousy and greed are threatening to overrun his Christmas.
James McAvoy
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Shakespeare's stories are still very strong. He structured fantastic stories about things that were fundamental to the human being and psyche.
James McAvoy
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I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him.
James McAvoy
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Passing my motorcycle theory test gave me a disproportionate feeling of greatness.
James McAvoy
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I always have a beard between jobs. I just let it grow until they pay me to shave it. People are quite surprised it's ginger. Sometimes they ask me if dye my hair and I always say 'Wow, no!' I'm 'trans-ginger.'
James McAvoy
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I think the most romantic thing you can do is just turn up. Turn up when it's difficult for you. Travel halfway around the world or just up the road. Whatever it is, just be there.
James McAvoy
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Kids audience is a brilliant audience. If you've got an audience of adults standing up and clapping, or you've got an audience of kids standing up and clapping, I know which one I'd choose.
James McAvoy
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A cry-wanking scene is the struggle to live, in a single moment.
James McAvoy
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I'm taking probably the biggest risk of my career in playing the part in Filth. If you stop taking risks, then you get bored, or you just keep playing the same part, over and over again. Eventually audiences get bored of that, as well.
James McAvoy
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Distance is a bad excuse for not having a good relationship with somebody. It's the determination to keep it going or let it fall by the wayside that's the real reason that the relationships continue.
James McAvoy
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I was talking to one of my aunties at Christmas and she said she didn’t think it was ever in my nature to go against the grain, that I was always a good boy. I think she was right - I did always want to be good.
James McAvoy