. “He’s just me. With a West Country accent. It’s different elements to me that aren’t fully realised – sort of what would have happened to me if I’d made different choices.” I’m a little bit alarmed to hear this, given that the character in question is a serial killer who kidnaps children and cuts out their tongues., a compelling English language remake of the 2022 Danish film, McAvoy plays Paddy, whom we first meet on holiday in Croatia with his wife Ciara and their young son.
It reminds me of something McAvoy said in 2022: that whenever he does a play – he’s recently played both Macbeth andin the West End – he leaves something on the stage and never gets it back. What did he mean by that? “You’ve got to sacrifice something every time you perform, I think,” says McAvoy. “It can be blood, sweat and tears, it can be your dignity…” As he talks, he rubs his hands up and down the wicker chair he’s sitting on. “Part of the contract is that you sacrifice something.
The other day, McAvoy was speaking to somebody who works in the studio side of show business. “They were talking about how the new people coming in to their part of the industry right now, they just don’t have to work as hard as they did. You had to fight for it before. You had to struggle for it before, or you just didn’t get it. Whereas now is different. And that’s good,” he adds, half-convincingly, “because you don’t burn people out.