James McAvoy played the younger Professor X in the X-Men franchise under the banner of 20th Century Fox. Following his X-Men tenure, McAvoy appeared in several projects which includes his recent appearance as Paddy in James Watkins’ Speak No Evil. still, McAvoy’s stand-out role will always be Professor X, the actor has recently shared his favorite X-Men movie which is not that surprising.
James McAvoy Revealed His Favorite X-Men Movie
James McAvoy has appeared in four of the X-Men movies and he named his favorite in the franchise giving credit to Matthew Vaugh’s X-Men: First Class that was released in 2011.
“First Class, I think is my favorite film in terms of the journey from me as an actor,” McAvoy told Josh Horowitz in a recent interview during his promotion of Speak No Evil.
“And what I got to explore of Charles, I’d say Days of Future Past, um but I love I think Days of Future Past, Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, they’re much more sort of classical films and classical sort of superhero films. I think First Class was trying to do something with a kind of different sort of energy and feel which I responded to at the time when I was I mean this is 15 years ago”
McAvoy went on to add, “I was 30 then and so yeah it was the right movie for me at the right time but so I don’t really rank them all but in terms of the journey and what I got to explore with Charles, I mean I couldn’t have wished for more yeah, in Days of Future Past that was like an acting workout doing that role like sure compared to some of the more Art House films that I’ve done even so I loved it.”
X-Men characters have not shifted to Marvel Studios after Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. The MCU debut of the characters began with X-Men ’97 and later continued with Deadpool & Wolverine. Although the X-Men reboot is on the card, it would take a while for fans to see the new actor playing McAvoy’s character.
James McAvoy Shared How He Got His X-Men Role
McAvoy got his X-Men role without auditioning for it but before joining the movie he had a very low bank balance which was pretty concerning as the actor welcomed his first child. “My first child came and neither myself nor my wife at the time worked for about 6 months to a year,” McAvoy told Horowitz.
“We just stayed at home and looked after him and we weren’t like, we weren’t penniless, we didn’t have any debt but we had pretty much nothing in the bank and at that point, I needed to work but I wanted to work from home in London so that I could I didn’t want to just disappear from the kid,” the actor said.
Thankfully, X-Men came knocking at his door. “X-Men came in I went where’s it filming they went Pinewood, it’s 40 minutes from my front door,” The Split actor continued adding “I was like awesome and I was also like X-Men great I loved the cartoon when I was a kid that’ be brilliant I loved the movies that they came out in 2000 and Brian’s original movies they were brilliant.” Later he enquired about his part and after knowing that he was playing Professor X, he was quite excited.
As directed, he went to meet the director Matthew Vaughn at a restaurant, “I meet Matthew Vaughn. He has a quick chat with me and then I sit and read the script. Nobody tells me that there’s only like 60 pages of it at this point and I feel like it’s good.”
Still, the actor was quite surprised as he has a three-picture deal and he was reading only a short script for the movie still, he said yes quite instantly calling it a work of “genius.”
