Buy Or Don’t Buy

Most successful actors fall into a niche: George Clooney playing the charmer; Clint Eastwood playing the tough guy; Clive Owen playing Clive Owen. In a world as competitive as Hollywood, you’ve gotta stick with what works.

And yet, take a look at what James McAvoy has portrayed so far in his relatively short career:

Soldier. Noble!

Assassin. Sexy!

Faun. Magical!

Inexplicably, it seems that his role as Mr. Tumnus the Friendly Faun was what finally got this dude on the public’s radar. (Or maybe I just spent too much time with 8-year-olds during the summer of ’06.)

But what’s truly impressive about James McAvoy is that I buy him as anything. A mythical creature in the woods of Narnia? He sells it. A trivia nerd navigating the halls of Bristol University in the mid-80s? Yeah, I can see that. The morally compromised physician to an evil Ugandan dictator? I buy it.

In fact, the only thing I don’t buy him as is an American. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him in Wanted. He’s got the flat American accent down pretty well, as well as the American affinity for graphic violence. Put a gun in his hand and he totally holds his own against Angelina.

Yet there’s something about him that just screams “THIS MAN BELONGS IN A KILT!” His sad-sack cubicle dweller reminded me of the UK Office’s Tim during the film’s first 20 minutes, and somehow that cheap blue jacket he wore just didn’t look like something a Yank would own, no matter how downtrodden his life.

His undeniable Scottishness is also the only thing that explains why McAvoy is so damned attractive. I mean, when’s the last time an American actor that short and scrawny spawned a Facebook group declaring that its members “wouldn’t mind doing him in a library”?

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that Mr. McAvoy has much in the works right now – IMDB says that he’s filming The Last Station, a period piece about Leo Tolstoy, but there’s nothing lined up beyond that. This might be explained by his assertion that he and his wife, actress Anne-Marie Duff, schedule their work around one another so that they don’t have to live apart. (Aw! He’s a romantic, too!) It’s a disappointment, but I guess if I need a fix I can just watch Atonement over and over again.

Overall, I buy James McAvoy. And I’ll buy him as anything he chooses to play in the future – a junkie, a gay cowboy, a serial killer, a mermaid – so long as he keeps that charming accent of his intact.