For the first 20 years of his meteoric career, James McAvoy hardly stopped for breath. But as the final part of His Dark Materials comes to our screens, he tells Craig McLean it’s time to ease up
James McAvoy is waiting for a coffee (black and “posh”) and is talking about religious faith and his lack of it. In his childhood and early teens, the actor was a regular church-goer. He didn’t believe. “I think I just did it. And whenever I was in a pickle or a bind, suddenly faith came into it: ‘Please, God, I promise I’ll make my bed if you make this teeth-pulling thing not hurt!’”
McAvoy was born in Glasgow and raised by working-class, Catholic grandparents in the wake of his parents’ split, when he was seven. (He has a sister, Joy, who is also an actor.) I ask if his grandparents were devout. “No,” McAvoy says. “In fact, my granda’ was a Protestant and my granny was a Catholic. But my granda’ went to Catholic church. They were a weird mix – very good, church-going Catholics. And then, round about when I turned 16, they just stopped making me go.”
