McAvoy and Erin Doherty lead the new movie ‘Faith,’ which premiered Sept. 11 at the Toronto International Film Festival
Credit: Tristan Fewings/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- James McAvoy talks to PEOPLE amid the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of his movie Faith
- The actor plays an “unsettling and quite scary” character in the new film, he teases
- While McAvoy’s two kids haven’t seen his past villainous roles, his wife Lisa Liberati “loves it, which is weird and brilliant”
How does James McAvoy’s family feel about his villainous screen roles?
Speaking at the People / Entertainment Weekly / Shutterstock studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Sept. 11, the Scottish actor, 47, gives an unexpected answer: his wife, Lisa Liberati, enjoys seeing his dark side.
“My wife loves it, which is weird and brilliant,” says McAvoy of his TIFF premiere Faith, in which he stars opposite Erin Doherty as a man who turns out to have unsettling secrets.
The star’s two children, he adds, are out of the loop on his horror films. “I’m not sure if my eldest has seen any of the scarier ones,” McAvoy says of 15-year-old Brendan, who he shares with ex-wife Anne-Marie Duff. “He’s seen all the superhero stuff, and stuff like that, but I don’t think he’s seen any of the scarier ones.”
The “little one,” he says, referring to the second son he and Liberati welcomed around 2022, “hasn’t seen any of that. But my wife really like it.”
Credit: Mike Marsland/Getty
McAvoy began making a name for himself in the horror genre with 2016’s M. Night Shyamalan movie Split, in which he played multiple alternate personalities. It was then that he connected with Liberati, as she worked as Shyamalan’s personal assistant. The Speak No Evil star later confirmed they had gotten married.
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Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams’ Faith differs from those past roles, McAvoy tells PEOPLE. “The weird thing about this part is that, I think with Split, Glass and Speak No Evil, I definitely did that on purpose. I knew when I was being unsettling,” says the star.
Credit: Courtesy of TIFF
Filming Faith, “I just played him as myself. There was zero character I saw because the script was so good, it doing the tension, it doing the threat. The threat was in the air.”
He concludes, “Even though this character is kind of unsettling and quite scary at times, really, I’m just being myself and playing it nicely, I feel, but that seems to really unsettle people in the audience, which is brilliant.”
McAvoy also includes the miniseries Meantime and thriller film Control among his upcoming screen projects.
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 10–20. Following its Sept. 11 premiere there, Faith does not yet have a release date.
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