‘I’ve failed, badly – and I’m good with it’: James McAvoy on class, comfort and carnage

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He is a funny character, James McAvoy. I meet him in one of those fancy Soho hotels where the cast of films that are about to be massive assemble so they can all be interviewed on the same day. And McAvoy’s new psychological thriller, Speak No Evil, will be massive. A remake of the 2022 Danish original, it is just as terrifying, with one difference.

McAvoy, 45, is personable and urbane. He is wearing a suit, but looks like a guy who changes into cargo shorts as soon as he gets home. “I’m really lucky in a lot of ways, mainly that my granny’s all over me,” he says. “I’ve definitely got a large dose of what she has.” His parents divorced when he was 11, and his mother was ill, so he went to live with his grandparents in Drumchapel, Glasgow. Later, considering class, he describes his childhood tangentially, talking about why Ken Loach would never cast him. “I’m too much of an actor. And I’m, like: ‘I grew up on the council estate you shot half your films on!’ But I’m too much of an actor.”

Anyway, back to his granny: “She doesn’t really give a fuck about what anybody thinks of her. So it liberates her. I’m definitely capable of being embarrassed, but I don’t feel embarrassed about being masculine enough, I don’t feel embarrassed about getting it wrong, or not being clued-up, not knowing something that other people know.” That’s borne out by the way he talks, which is free-ranging and exploratory, very open, full of wild theories – such as that the first performance known to man was probably a human or animal sacrifice, so: “There’s some genetic memory in us that expects that person up there to bleed.” I love that kind of thing.

But let the man finish: “I think I’m desensitised because I’ve spent my life on screens and stages being either clapped or booed, and it’s a gamble. I don’t always come off winning that bet. I can deal with criticism because I’ve failed, badly, on both platforms, and I’m good with it.”

McAvoy in army uniform and helmet, standing in front of a field of poppies, in Atonement

For someone who has always met his failures with standout equanimity, it is amazing how often he mentions them. There is the play The Reel of the Hanged Man, which, he says was “very poorly received, early in my career, and that was tough. Only one reviewer liked my performance in it, and they got my name wrong.”

“I’ve been in films that have either been slaughtered, or they’ve been damned with such faint praise that you know nobody’s going to see them,” he continues, not naming them. His cinematic career started in 1995, with The Near Room, and has spanned romcom (Penelope), blockbuster (X-Men), historical (Regeneration, Atonement, The Last King of Scotland), although it feels like there’s a lot more in there that was talked about than not talked about. “Between a good film and a good play, I’d rather be in a good play,” he says. “But between a bad film and a bad play, I’d 100% rather be in a bad film: you get paid more, the audience aren’t there, nobody can boo you, and by the time it comes out, it’s a year down the line and you don’t even have to see it.” The thing is, I bet he does see it, and kills himself over it, while claiming not to care. In other words, he may still be very like his granny, but she may be a little bit more complicated than he lets on.

McAvoy as Dr Nicholas Garrigan in The Last King of Scotland.

Speak No Evil is a horror film directed by James Watkins. McAvoy’s villain is petrifying in every way. His physical presence is so menacing, he is like a minotaur: he could put CGI out of business. “I leaned out and did all that stupid stuff that actors do,” he says. “Thirty push-ups, five seconds before the take, just to pump my shoulders out, make my neck thicker, get the veins going. To make it more animalistic, to look like I could really do some damage. Because I’m a 5ft 7 guy, you’ve got to project a lot.” (Here, he takes a brief detour down memory lane of the unnamed but keenly remembered parts he didn’t get, because he was too short. He ends, laughing: “I don’t have any complaints. I don’t think I’ve been discriminated against. I’m doing all right.”)

In essence, Speak No Evil comprises two couples – one British, one American but living in London – with one child each. After they meet on holiday, the Americans go to visit Paddy (McAvoy) and his wife, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), at their home in Devon. For a short time, it appears to be a tense comedy of cross-continental manners and how disgusting British plumbing, domestic hygiene and decor are to people used to a higher standard and who use napkins. Then it descends into a psychological horror so jump-scary that there were audible gasps in the audience when I saw it, and there were only three of us. “We filmed an audience in the US with night vision cameras,” he says. “They got really involved; they were shouting at my character: ‘No!’ There’s not that much violence, not that much gore, I don’t think there’s any sex. It’s really a couple of couples sitting around having chats.” Well, OK, it is, but it really isn’t.

It is definitely the most threatening I have ever seen McAvoy, even beating his tour de force as 23 split personalities in M Night Shyamalan’s horror Split. For comparison, McAvoy recalls his role in Filth, based on the Irvine Welsh novel: “That was surreal and cartoony at times, before it gets really real. But he’s so clearly unwell that I think, as much as he’s sinister, he’s his own victim.”

If Speak No Evil fits into the body of McAvoy’s work, it is in more general terms, in that Paddy, albeit cynically, describes his project as class war. “I’m a product of where I come from, and the stories that I’m interested in are quite often about people with limited opportunities, whose horizons are limited, who are fighting to get out of that, or are rebelling against the suppression that forces them into that,” says McAvoy. “It’s not the only thing I’m interested in. I’ve played poshos as well, but it’s who I am, it’s the stuff that formed me. I guess I’m bohemian class now, right? Isn’t that what you are as an artist? But I live my life with a massive working-class influence. That’s how I approach parenting, how I approach the work I choose, the stories I’m interested in.”

He became a household name when he appeared in the first two seasons of Paul Abbott’s compelling black comedy Shameless. McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duff carried the heart of it, for all that there were other brilliant and much greyer beards in the cast (David Threlfall, for instance). McAvoy was 25, Duff was 33, and the pair later married, after being full-on tabloid fodder for ages. They had a son in 2010, and divorced in 2016. McAvoy then married Lisa Liberati, in 2022, and they had a son that year. He is funny about relationships, talking, not about his own, but the American couple in Speak No Evil: he thinks they fall apart because modern life is soft.

“These days, you’ve got a hot shower every day, you’ve got telly, you’ve got PlayStations, you’ve got sweeties, you’ve got more calories than you know what to do with. Everything on TV is about, you go get it, dream big, you’ll get what you want to have, love should be the best love ever.” I take the point that self-actualisation is a luxury preoccupation, but I still laugh at the idea that too many sweets makes you dissatisfied in your marriage.

“The problem becoming a problem makes it worse,” he clarifies, still talking about the film. “Therapy is actually really bad for you. Thinking about the problem just makes it 10 times bigger.” Does he believe that? “No, but I’m interested in that thought. As I’m heading into my late 40s, should I try therapy? I’ve watched a couple of TikTok videos that say it might be unhealthy. Maybe I’ll believe that instead of doing the hard work.

“It’s a really weird form, acting,” he concludes. “You’re examining human behaviour, you’re really thinking about it. I’m not going to go so far as to say I’m any kind of psychoanalyst, but it’s more than pseudo psychoanalysis. It’s sort of performative psychology. It’s really good fun, and it’s a privilege to spend your life doing it. I don’t know if it gives me any answers. But it gives me lots of opinions.”

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