James McAvoy Quotes

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.'

I was brought up by my grandparents. So people go, oh, what was that like? That must have been hard. And you go: No, it wasn't.' It was just completely actually normal because the new norm seems to be whatever you make of it, doesn't it?

I don't mind playing somebody who's not likable, or makes the audience feel slightly conflicted.

I generally get challenged; I haven't been typecast, which is really, really, nice. It's not something that every actor gets, really. It's luxury. Most actors are capable of it, but they aren't afforded the opportunity to express their variety.

I've been in a few fights and I know what it's like to get punched in the face.

Next year, if no one gives me any work, that's fine. I'm not going to do well anyway. I'm not an actor, I'm just exploiting this industry.

A cry-wanking scene is the struggle to live, in a single moment.

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.

I want to be like Matt Damon and do a hugely successful thinking-man's action franchise like Bourne.

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.

Film sets are a strange place, but an exciting place. I do love my work; I really enjoy going to work. But if you just spend all your time on film sets or even on stage, you can become a Michael Jackson figure, living in your own little universe.

I've done enough for a while and people get fed up of seeing you, but apart from that, although I'm young, I need a bit of rest. You could say I have become a house husband. It's not a new man thing, it's just largely a boring man who doesn't mind staying in the house thing.

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.

Girls didn't really take much interest in me until I was about 14. But I knew how to talk to them very quickly. What I figured out - that my friends didn't - was you have to talk to women like you're not constantly trying to have sex with them. That seemed to work.

No movie has ever got enough time. It doesn't matter how much money you've got, and it doesn't matter how much money you've not got. You never finish on time. You're always up against it and you're always working up until the end.

We're in a horrible, repugnant place now where kids are told it's their right and due to be hugely famous. Not good at their job, not good at anything, just hugely famous. This is not sane. Little girls think they'll be famous if they have vast breast implants and might as well die if they don't.

I'd like to have stayed in the Scouts beyond the age of 12.

Marriage is an ongoing thing, man. You continue to work at it. But it's joyful. And joyous. I don't care if people are living without a marriage certificate. It's just about people, in some way, saying to each other, I commit to you. I will help you in this life.

Every time I do a movie, especially an animated movie, I just seem to scream and shout and hyperventilate for money.

I don't think I'm ever going to get to the point where people run across a freeway to take a picture of me. I really don't see it getting to that level of hysteria unless I have an affair with the Queen of Sweden or something like that.

I did undergo hypnotherapy, and it didn't work! The guy couldn't put me under. I was very disappointed. I was very keen to be suggested, to have somebody tell me to run naked or cluck like a chicken or whatever, but it didn't work for me, I'm afraid.

As I get older, I want to do more films for kids because they're the best audience around. Just putting a smile on a kid's face is the best thing.

I am a nerd, but I don't dive head-first into any fiefdom of nerdiness, except for maybe 'Star Trek.'

I wanted to be a doctor at one point and I also wanted to be a pilot. I think if you grow up in a dodgy area, reality often beats down those ambitions as you get older. But with me that never really happened.

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.

I don't want to be all worthy about it, but I don't do red carpets, I don't do events and I don't accept freebies that much.

I like playing sport, and I like doing physical stuff. I like hiking and I like climbing and I like playing sport. I do a lot. But I don't like the term 'exercising.' I feel like with sport, you're playing games. But with exercise, you're literally just trying to stop yourself from dying too young. It's weird.

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.

The minute you start to strategize too much, the more you start to think you're in control of your own fate. And you're not, really.

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.

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.

For me, Charles Xavier is a monk. He's like a selfless, egoless almost sexless force for the betterment of humanity and mortality.

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.

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.

I learned something from a string of failed relationships. You don't see a pattern quickly. You see it over time. I learned to stop jumping in at the first sign of attraction. As soon as you're attracted to someone, you go for it - whether or not it's a good idea. Basically, just going out and getting laid.

If a scene is three pages long, quite often people break it up and do a page, say 'cut' then move on to the next bit, they do it in cuts. I don't really like doing that; I like to go through it all in one organic run, then give notes afterward. A little bit more like theater.

I've never worked as hard as when I was at drama school. It's the most professional environment I've ever been in.

As an actor sometimes you can be a bit emotional and forceful, and that's not always the way to be.

I did 'Narnia' because it was a good opportunity and all that, but really? I wanted to play Mr. Tumnus because he's my favourite children's character. That was awesome.

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.

The world seemed less scary and I started to like myself a little bit more.

I do find it strange, doing magazine shoots. Photographers always go, 'Why don't you like to have your picture taken? That's what you do for a living anyway. Just pretend you're acting. It's the same thing!'

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.

I don't really... go to 'the opening of an envelope.' I don't really turn up to all the events, you know what I mean? If I'm involved, I'll go, and if there's a good friend who needs support, I'll go, but otherwise... I don't go. I'm probably just a bit like my grandparents; I like staying in.

Leading man seems to quite often be an idealized figure.

[Macbeth] is historically set in a place depicted by Shakespeare as brutal and violent, incredibly superstitious, and that's something that I do believe is Scottish.

I wanted to be a missionary and work abroad, but girls started to become a bigger part of my life around the time I lost interest in the priesthood.

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.