Scottish actor James McAvoy made his acting debut as a teen in the 1995 film The Near Room with Andy Serkis. He appeared in the films Wimbledon (2004) and Inside I'm Dancing (2004), before being cast as Mr. Tumnus in the 2005 fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on C. S. Lewis's 1950 novel. The following year, he starred in director Kevin Macdonald's drama film The Last King of Scotland. He co-starred in the romance films Penelope (2006) with Christina Ricci, Becoming Jane (2007) with Anne Hathaway, and Atonement (2007) with Keira Knightley. He made his theatre debut as Riff in the West Side Story at the Courtyard Centre for the Arts Hereford. He has since performed in several West End productions, receiving four Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nominations.
In 2011, McAvoy was cast as Charles Xavier, a fictional character based on the Marvel Comics character in the superhero film X-Men: First Class (2011). He later reprised his role in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018) and Dark Phoenix (2019). McAvoy starred in the 2013 crime comedy-drama film Filth, for which he won Best Actor in the British Independent Film Awards.[1] A year later, he starred with Jessica Chastain in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, the collective title of three films, Him, Her and Them. In 2016, he portrayed Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with 23 alternate personalities, in M. Night Shyamalan's Split, for which he received critical acclaim,[2][3] and later reprised the role for the sequel Glass (2019). He has starred in the science fiction horror film Victor Frankenstein with Daniel Radcliffe (2015), action thriller film Atomic Blonde with Charlize Theron (2017), and played Bill Denbrough in the supernatural horror film It Chapter Two, the second installment of the It film series based on Stephen King's 1986 novel.
McAvoy's television work includes a minor role in the HBO war drama miniseries Band of Brothers (2001), the thriller State of Play (2003) and as Leto II Atreides in the science fiction miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune (2003). From 2004 to 2005, he played Steve McBride in the British comedy drama Shameless. Since 2019, he has portrayed Lord Asriel Belacqua in the BBC/HBO fantasy series His Dark Materials.
- ^ Wyatt, Daisy (9 December 2013). "James McAvoy wins best actor at British Independent Film Awards – News – Films". The Independent. Archived from the original on 26 February 2014. Retrieved 2 March 2014.
- ^ "Split (2017)". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
- ^ Rose, Steve (12 January 2017). "From Split to Psycho: why cinema fails dissociative identity disorder". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 24 January 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2017.