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Did you know that James McAvoy was almost in the Harry Potter movies? Years before the Scottish actor became well-known for playing Professor X in the X-Men prequels, starring in M. Night Shymalan’s Split or earning praise for his recent horror movie, Speak No Evil, he was just trying to break big. While I think he would have been amazing in the Wizarding World, after hearing the story, I actually think he made the right call.
Why James McAvoy Turned Down A Role In Harry Potter
In a resurfaced clip from James McAvoy’s Speak No Evil press tour (via Instagram) that’s been making the rounds, the actor revealed he was offered a lot of money to be part in the Harry Potter franchise, and he actually declined. In his words:
I was nearly in Harry Potter. Almost. The very first movie I think it was. Tom Riddle’s in the first one, right? But, he’s like in it for like a scene, in a flashback or something like that. I distinctly remember it was right at the beginning of my career. I auditioned for it. They wanted to put us in a retainer so that they could hold us, and keep us to choose later, which was a really strange thing. And, they offered quite a lot of money for me at the time. It was a ton of money, it was like 40,000 pounds or something like that.
Fans of the Wizarding World know well that Tom Riddle is the name of the series’ main villain before he became the Dark Lord, or Voldemort, who wanted to kill Harry Potter after “The Boy Who Lived” became part of a prophecy that threatened his livelihood. It’s theoretically a big role, except Riddle only has a brief scene in the first movie in a flashback where we learn of his existence. While McAvoy was offered tens of thousands of pounds, here’s what happened next:
And I’d done very little work and I wouldn’t be able to do any work for about seven months, I think it was. And I said to my agent, ‘What do you think?’ And Ruth Young, who’s been my agent since, she was like ‘Absolutely not. Don’t do that.’ She was like, ‘We’re going to go do something else.’
Sure, some people make 40,000 pounds in a year, and it would have been an easy job for the 22-year-old to simply take and sit on. However, it sounds like he wanted to work and really make a name for himself. He ended up starring in a play called Out in the Open the year the first Potter movie hit theaters.
Why I Think James McAvoy Made The Right Choice
While I definitely thought to myself how cool it would have been for a young McAvoy to play Tom Riddle, I do think the actor was meant for better things than a cameo in a huge movie. Riddle didn’t end up appearing in the first Harry Potter movie, but had a small role in The Chamber of Secrets. The actor who ended up playing him, Christian Coulson, never got to play the role past that film, and isn’t a household name like McAvoy. Plus, McAvoy loved his time in Out In The Open. As he continued:
It was part of the making of me, and I actually got an acting workout. It was actually learning and doing all that.
I also read that Atonement director Joe Wright ended up casting James McAvoy in the 2007 romantic drama after seeing him in that very play! Wright said so in a Los Angeles Times article. Even though he turned down Harry Potter, it would only be a few years until we saw him play Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia movie, a role for which he was absolutely perfect. I think it all worked out in his favor in the end.