HHe’s a funny character, James McAvoy. I meet him in one of those fancy Soho hotels where the cast of soon-to-be-smash films gather so they can all be interviewed on the same day. And McAvoy’s new psychological thriller Speak No Evil is going to be a smash hit. A remake of the 2022 Danish original, it’s just as terrifying, with one difference.

McAvoy, 45, is personable and urbane. He wears a suit but looks like the kind of guy who’d slip into cargo shorts as soon as he got home. “I’m really lucky in a lot of ways, especially that my granny throws herself around me,” he says. “I definitely have a big dose of what she’s got.” His parents divorced when he was 11 and his mother was ill, so he went to live with his grandparents in Drumchapel, Glasgow. Later, reflecting on classes, he describes his childhood in passing and talks about why Ken Loach would never cast him. “I’m too much of an actor. And I’m like, ‘I grew up on the council estate where you guys made half your films!’ But I’m too much of an actor.”

But back to his grandmother: “She doesn’t give a damn what other people think of her. That’s liberating for her. I can be embarrassing, but I’m not ashamed if I’m manly enough, I’m not ashamed if I do something wrong or am out of touch, if I don’t know something other people know.” This is confirmed by his way of speaking, which is free and probing, very open, full of wild theories – like that the first known performance was probably a human or animal sacrifice, so: “There’s a kind of genetic memory in us that expects that person up there to bleed.” I love that kind of thing.

But let the man finish: “I think I’ve become jaded because I’ve spent my life being applauded or booed on screens and stages, and that’s a gamble. I don’t always win that bet. I can handle criticism because I’ve failed on both platforms, and failed badly, and I handle it well.”

For someone who has always faced his failures with remarkable composure, it is surprising how often he mentions them. Take The Reel of the Hanged Man, for example, which, he says, “was very badly received early in my career, and that was tough. Only one critic liked my performance in it, and they spelled my name wrong.”

“I’ve been in movies that have either been butchered or have been heaped with so little praise that you know nobody’s going to watch them,” he continues, but doesn’t name names. His film career began in 1995 with The Near Room and has spanned romantic comedies (Penelope), blockbusters (X-Men) and period pieces (Regeneration, Atonement, The Last King of Scotland), though it feels like there’s been a lot more talk than not. “Between a good movie and a good play, I’d rather be in a good play,” he says. “But between a bad movie and a bad play, I’d 100% rather be in a bad movie: you get paid more, the audience isn’t there, nobody can boo you, and by the time the movie comes out, a year has passed and you don’t even have to see it.” The thing is, I bet he does sees it and kills himself over it, while claiming he doesn’t care. In other words, he may still be a lot like his grandma, but she may be a bit more complicated than he lets on.

Speak No Evil is a horror film by James Watkins. McAvoy’s villain is terrifying in every way. His physical presence is so menacing that he’s like a Minotaur: he could put CGI out of business. “I leaned forward and did all the stupid things actors do,” he says. “Thirty push-ups, five seconds before the shot, just to square my shoulders, make my neck bigger, get the veins going. To make it more animalistic, to look like I could really do damage. Because I’m a 5’7 guy, you have to project a lot.” (Here he takes a brief detour down memory lane to the unnamed but well-remembered roles he didn’t get because he was too short. At the end he laughs: “I have no complaints. I don’t think I was discriminated against. I’m fine.”)

Essentially, Speak No Evil is about two couples – a Brit and an American – living in London, each with one child. After meeting on holiday, the Americans visit Paddy (McAvoy) and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) at their home in Devon. For a brief moment, the film seems like a suspenseful comedy about cross-continental manners, and how disgusting British sanitation, domestic hygiene and furnishings are to people accustomed to higher standards and using napkins. Then it degenerates into a psychological horror film so scary that the audience gasped audibly when I saw it, and there were only three of us. “We filmed an audience in the US with night-vision cameras,” he says. “They were really engaging; they screamed at my character: ‘No!’ There’s not as much violence, not as much blood, I don’t think there’s any sex. It’s basically a couple of couples sitting around chatting.” Well, okay, it is, but actually it’s not.

It’s definitely the most menacing thing I’ve ever seen McAvoy, surpassing even his stellar performance as 23 split personalities in M. Night Shyamalan’s horror film Split. By comparison, McAvoy recalls his role in Filth, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh: “That was surreal and cartoonish at times before it became really real. But he’s so obviously not OK that I think, as scary as he is, he’s his own victim.”

If Speak No Evil fits into McAvoy’s body of work, it is in a more general sense, with Paddy describing his project, albeit cynically, as a class struggle. “I am a product of my background and the stories that interest me are often about people with limited opportunities, whose horizons are limited, who are struggling to get out of there or who are rebelling against the oppression that forces them to do so,” says McAvoy. “That’s not the only thing that interests me. I’ve played poshos before, but that’s who I am, that’s what shaped me. I guess I’m bohemian now, right? Isn’t that what you are as an artist? But I live my life under a massive working-class influence. That’s how I approach parenting, that’s how I approach the work I choose, the stories that interest me.”

He became a household name when he appeared in the first two seasons of Paul Abbott’s riveting black comedy Shameless. McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duff were the centerpiece of the series, although there were other brilliant and much greyer beards in the cast (David Threlfall, for example). McAvoy was 25, Duff 33, and the couple later married after being forever full-on tabloid fodder. They had a son in 2010 and divorced in 2016. McAvoy then married Lisa Liberati in 2022, and they had a son that year. He’s witty about relationships, but not talking about his own, but about the American couple in Speak No Evil: he thinks they fall apart because modern life is soft.

“These days you can have a hot shower every day, you have TV, you have PlayStations, you have candy, you have more calories than you know what to do with. TV is all about going for it, dreaming big, getting what you want, and love should be the best love ever.” I understand that self-actualization is a luxury, but I still laugh at the idea that too much candy will make you unhappy in marriage.

“The problem becomes the problem and makes it worse,” he clarifies, still talking about the film. “Therapy is actually really bad for you. Thinking about the problem just makes it ten times bigger.” Does he believe that? “No, but that thought interests me. As I approach my late forties, should I try therapy? I’ve watched a few TikTok videos saying it might be unhealthy. Maybe I’ll believe that instead of doing the hard work.

“Acting is a really strange form,” he concludes. “You study human behavior, you really think about it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m some kind of psychoanalyst, but it’s more than pseudo-psychoanalysis. It’s a kind of performative psychology. It’s really fun and it’s a privilege to spend your life doing it. I don’t know if it gives me any answers. But it gives me a lot of opinions.”