Explore Quotes by James Mcavoy

If my career isn't going that well, I'd rather it flounder than desperately trying to show up on red carpets: 'I'm for hire! Remember me!'

I'm instinctively very suspicious and guarded, and I try to counteract it so much. I find reason allows you to be open, and my only sort of ambition in life is to try and be as open as possible.

Until I'm on the set of a film, to me it's still not for real.

When I started acting, I thought if I got one or two jobs a year I'd be lucky. So yeah, my career has gone so much farther than I ever suspected it would, and as such I feel lucky for everything I get. I feel thankful and grateful.

I've spent a long time giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I'm tired of it.

I still take work if I think it's good. If I like the script, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.

I've played a lot of very posh, sort of noble or aristocratic English people, which is nothing like what I am, so I feel that there is quite a lot distance there and have played a little bit far away from myself.

Shooting films in Britain is always difficult, because we've never got enough money to make them.

I like reading about the past. I'm definitely not a history buff, but I do read a bit of history now and again, and to do that for work is really exciting.

One of the weird things about Hollywood is we're all imposters; we're all just glammed up.

I don't know why we're not interested in seeing good people. I think we like seeing good people, but only if bad things happen to them. Which is weird, isn't it?

Girls didn't really take much interest in me until I was about 14. But I knew how to talk to them very quickly. What I figured out - that my friends didn't - was you have to talk to women like you're not constantly trying to have sex with them. That seemed to work.

Nobody can be whatever they want to be. No kid can do whatever they want to do. It's a total lie. But they have the right to try and do whatever they want to do. That's their right, to aim to do whatever they want to do.

I'm having the life that I kind of hoped I might have one time, you know? I do feel like I have a place here. And, at least, I deserve it, as much as anybody else, hopefully.

I like playing a variety of characters. I feel like I've been able to play different kinds of characters - I've done a lot of period pieces - but I've never had to play the same type of character too much.

I decided to give up the idea of being a priest before I decided I wanted to be an actor. I considered it for a couple of weeks, really. I'm a young Catholic, do you know what I mean. You're going to consider it.

I don't do Facebook and I don't do Twitter, and already I notice that, with some of my friends, there's a whole sphere of conversation that I'm completely on the outside of, and that's my choice. But, to a greater extent, that's what the whole of life is like.

No movie has ever got enough time. It doesn't matter how much money you've got, and it doesn't matter how much money you've not got. You never finish on time. You're always up against it and you're always working up until the end.

Since my worldview has expanded, I don't consider myself working class anymore, and I'm attracted to playing characters who go through a similar evolution.

My favorite name of a fandom is Benedict Cumberbatch's - 'the Cumberbatches' is just the best name.

I'd like to keep work work and life life. It means you've got your life to come back to, somewhere to come home to at night that isn't invaded by your day.