#ManCrushMonday: James McAvoy

For someone who watches an alarming amount of television, I usually drag my feet before succumbing to the cult hit of the moment, so it took months of endorsements back in 2011 before I finally logged into Netflix and got hooked on Shameless. Halfway through the first episode, I was surprised—and impressed—that a low-budget British dramedy delivered in Cockney I could barely decipher was the talk of the East Coast. Halfway through the third, I realized I was watching the wrong version.

Anyway, that's the story of how I first fell in love with James McAvoy, who awed me as Steve McBride, ethical car thief and heroic, love-struck caretaker. McAvoy now lives in London with his wife, Shameless co-star Anne-Marie Duff, and their son, Brendan, whom, with the most charming fatherly apologies, he won't discuss with the press.

For a while, McAvoy was one of the better actors who flew under the radar, but his accolades have, deservedly, more than trickled in. He's probably best known as Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise, and he starred alongside Jessica Chastain in last year's The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (now on DVD and Blu-Ray), a beautifully incisive drama about a couple in the aftermath of tragedy. On his way to work—he currently plays the 14th Earl of Gurney in the West End revival of Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class—McAvoy called me to talk about date nights, old friends, and the direct correlation between Michael Fassbender being in a movie and McAvoy being in it too.

Harper's BAZAAR: So, tell me, when you shoot a film without Michael Fassbender, do you miss him?

James McAvoy: Yes. Always. Even when I'm not shooting a movie. Yeah, we got on really well. And, you know, you can't have Christmas every day. You've got to save up for the good times.

HB: Did your friendship start with Band of Brothers, your first appearance together, back in 2001?

JM: Not really. We kind of crossed paths in Band of Brothers and a couple of times in London, but we never became buddies until we made X-men.

HB: Who are your best, oldest friends?

JM: I'd say my wife, Anne-Marie, is probably my best buddy. And I've got a couple of guys from drama school who I'm still incredibly close with. My mate Ross Wheaton, he's an actor. And another friend of mine named Tom Ellis.

HB: I met Tom Ellis, and you were featured heavily in the story of his adolescence as well. You know, just assuring you the feeling's mutual.

JM: Cross that out, I don't like that guy! Actually I might be seeing Tom tonight. He might be coming to the show later.

HB: When in the course of filming Shameless did you and Anne-Marie start dating?

JM: I was with somebody else when I started the show, so it wasn't until after the first season started filming that we got together. We worked together for pretty much an entire eight episodes and then got together in between.

HB: I recently watched The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. How did you get involved with that film?

JM: [SPOILER ALERT!] It was quite a long convoluted process, actually. [Director] Ned Benson sent me the script, like, a long time ago, and I'd just had my little boy. I loved the script. It was really quite rare. And then I got to the page when I realized that it might be about a couple suffering the grief of a child's death, and I just didn't want to be a part of it. They accepted that and went off and found someone else, I think Joel Edgerton did the movie, and at the last moment, he couldn't do the movie anymore. They had three or four days before the movie was going to collapse, and in that time they had to find another actor and secure finances and all that. And when it came back to me, like two years down the line, I wasn't as sensitive about it as I was when I first read the script. I jumped at it because I thought it was one of the most beautiful scripts I've ever read.

HB: I have to say, it's been a while since I had a good cry like the one when I watched The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. How about you—do you get emotionally invested in your films as a viewer, or is it impossible to be your own audience?

JM: Hey, that's what we want! Yes—it depends how near I am to the movie. Sometimes it's like playing the character again when you watch it, you know what I mean. Like you're going through it again. I played a guy called Robbie Turner in Atonement, and for some reason his story really stayed with me, and I felt so emotionally torn apart by that. It was on at Christmastime when we were flipping, and I was like, "Oh, fuck." And everyone was like, "Let's watch ten minutes!" And I said, "Okay, I'm going to leave the room."

HB: Did you two ever watch the U.S. version of Shameless?

JM: I watched like 20 minutes of the first episode. It was weird, man. Things weren't even in the script. They ad-libbed. It was crazy. You're like "Paul Abbott didn't even write that!"

HB: Where are you calling from, by the way?

JM: I'm in my car, and I'm driving to work. I'm going to the studio to do the The Ruling Class.

HB: Where do you hang out in London?

JM: I live in North London, and I like the South Bank, which is actually right in the middle of London. It's got all the theaters and the opera houses and restaurants and all that, and a big warship you can go on and a market with amazing food and fresh produce. And then I really like Crouch End, which is the part of London I live in, so I'm really lucky. It's very chilled out and seems almost like a village.

HB: What about London dining—are you a traditional fish and chips man?

JM: Yeah, I love a haddock and chips. I would never send you to a pub for fish and chips, but I would recommend the Priory Fish Bar, which is on Priory Road in Crouch End, and it's beautiful.

HB: What's your idea of an ideal date night with Anne-Marie?

JM: We have a favorite pizza place, but it kind of went downhill. The je ne se quoi, it just was missing. But like three doors down, another place opened up, and it's incredible—like really authentic Italian, thin-crust "mmm" pizza. So at the moment, I would like to do that with my wife every single day. But maybe the best kind of date wouldn't be a night, actually. It would be a day hiking in the woods, in the forest, in the hills, in the mountains, and some camping afterwards. A campfire and cobbled-together meal, followed by an uncomfortable night's sleep.