Los Angeles, Oct 14 (IANS) Hollywood actor James McAvoy has revealed why he didn’t live with his ‘Atonement’ castmates. The actor has shared that he felt “too socially awkward” to share the accommodation with them.
The 47-year-old actor had a “lot of fun” making the 2007 period drama but wasn’t a fan of director Joe Wright’s suggestion that the “key crew and main cast” all live in one house and share dinner together every night.
The film also starred Keira Knightley, Juno Temple, Benedict Cumberbatch and Vanessa Redgrave.
The actor said that he desperately sought to come up with an excuse to not live with his fellow actors. During an AMA session with fans on Reddit, James wrote when asked for a “fun story from ‘Atonement’”. The actor said, “Joe Wright, the director, wanted to live with some of the key crew and the main cast, and so everybody was in this one big house together. They had dinner together every night”.
He further mentioned, “There was a lot of fun socialising, not so much during the week, but on the weekends everybody would get together and have parties and it was really cool. It was a big party house on the weekends”.
He went on, “I felt so socially awkward that I didn’t really want to do this, I didn’t want to hang out with everybody 24/7, but I knew it was important to Joe, so I was like, ‘How can I get away with this?’”.
Fortunately, the director came up with the idea that he should be treated like the outsider his character is in the film, so he got to live in separate quarters and “dip in and socialise” when he felt the desire to do so.
“I said to Joe, my character in the movie is lower, working class, and he sounds like the others, but he isn’t like them, he’s not really accepted by the upper class, so I think I should live somewhere else on my own. So I ended up finessing into getting a little cottage to myself on the grounds of the massive, gorgeous, manor house, instead of with everyone in the party house”, he added.
–IANS
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