Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
James McAvoy felt “too socially awkward” to live with his Atonement castmates.
The 47-year-old actor had a “lot of fun” making the 2007 period drama but wasn’t a fan of director Joe Wright’s suggestion that the “key crew and main cast”, which included Keira Knightley, Juno Temple, Benedict Cumberbatch and Vanessa Redgrave, all live in one house and share dinner together every night, so he desperately sought to come up with an excuse.
During an AMA session with fans on Reddit, James wrote when asked for a “fun story from Atonement”: “Joe Wright, the director, wanted to live with some of the key crew and the main cast, and so everybody was in this one big house together.
“They had dinner together every night. There was a lot of fun socialising, not so much during the week, but on the weekends everybody would get together and have parties and it was really cool. It was a big party house on the weekends.
“I felt so socially awkward that I didn’t really want to do this, I didn’t want to hang out with everybody 24/7, but I knew it was important to Joe, so I was like, ‘How can I get away with this?’”
Fortunately, the California Schemin’ director came up with the idea that he should be treated like the outsider his character is in the film, so he got to live in separate quarters and “dip in and socialise” when he felt the desire to do so.
He continued: “I said to Joe, my character in the movie is lower, working class, and he sounds like the others, but he isn’t like them, he’s not really accepted by the upper class, so I think I should live somewhere else on my own.
“So I ended up finessing into getting a little cottage to myself on the grounds of the massive, gorgeous, manor house, instead of with everyone in the party house. I got to walk up through the manor grounds every morning and it was great, and I got my privacy and got to dip in and socialise only when I wanted to, not 24/7.
“Don’t tell Joe. But yeah we had a great time on Atonement.”
Meanwhile, James chose Chad Powers star Glen Powell as the non-Scottish actor he’d most like to play him in a biopic.
He said: “Glen Powell. I want to see Glen Powell do a Scottish accent and eat haggis.”
