James McAvoy has been linked to the Harry Potter universe several times in fan castings. Wouldn’t he be a great Voldemort for the Harry Potter series? As it turns out, McAvoy was at the beginning of his careerthan die-hard Potterheads ever thought possible.
James McAvoy almost played Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and then everything turned out completely differently
An exciting trivia that only a few people may know: In the early 2000s, James McAvoy auditioned as Tom RiddleThe Scottish actor reveals this in the latest edition of the podcast Happy Sad Confused, when host Josh Horowitz asks him which roles are still on his bucket list.
When the keyword Harry Potter is mentioned, McAvoy unpacks the anecdote:
I was almost in Harry Potter. I guess I can say that now. It was the very first film, I think. The role was… Tom Riddle. Was he in the first one? It was about a scene, a flashback or something. It was at the very beginning of my career. I went to an audition.
But the casting process had one big catch:
I was one of ten actors and they wanted to give us an advance so that they could hold and select later. It was very strange. They offered me £40,000, which was a lot of money for me at the time. Not least, I had hardly anything to show for it. But I wouldn’t have been allowed to take any other job for seven months.
Ultimately, McAvoy decided against the role:
I went to my agent and said, ‘What do you think?’ Ruth Young has been my agent for 24 or 25 years now and she said, ‘No way. We’ll find you something else.’ And that’s how I ended up with the play that I booed by homophobic gentlemen I got 275 pounds a week. It was a learning process for me. Even without Tom Riddle and Harry Potter, James McAvoy made it to the top of Hollywood
As tragic as the story sounds, the play mentioned by McAvoy was Out in the Open by Jonathan Harvey, which was performed at London’s Hampstead Theatre in 2001. Despite the boos that McAvoy remembers, the up-and-coming British director Joe Wright was also in the audience.
Wright was so impressed by McAvoy that he would have loved to cast him in his next film. However, it would be six years before the two would work together on a project. McAvoy finally shone under Wright’s direction in Atonement. The film adaptation of the novel was contributed significantly to his breakthrough at.
More than two decades later, McAvoy can look back on a varied career, starring in fantasy blockbusters, horror thrillers and ensemble casts in some seriously strong dramas. In two genres he would still like to try out more, as he reveals in the podcast: science fiction and comedy.