This hand-colored portrait of Hayne Hudjini, a Native American of the Oto Tribe, is one of hundreds of portraits highlighting American women at the Library Company. #WomensHistoryWednesday
You can find out more about our Program in Women’s History through our site: http://www.librarycompany.org/womensprogram/
I have said many times in posts that Scotland punches above it’s weight in many ways, at the moment that has never been more true than in the acting field, a nation of just under 5.5 million is certainly producing a fine line of acclaimed actors, none more so than today’s birthday boy James McAvoy
Born April 21st 1979 in Glasgow, McAvoy the charismatic Glaswegian had actually intended joining the navy or the priesthood before he stumbled upon acting as a career.
James was 16 when the actor and director David Hayman visited St Thomas Aquinas school in Drumchapel to give a talk on Shakespeare and ended up being heckled by some class troublemakers. “I felt bad for him,” recalls James. “So I went up at the end and said, ‘Thanks very much. That was very interesting,’ and asked him if I could make the tea, do some work experience, if he was ever doing another film.” McAvoy was taken by surprise when Hayman called back four months later asking him to audition. He tried out and won a role in the feature film The Near Room.
McAvoy hadn’t planned on becoming an actor, even when he got the part in the movie, but admitted later he changed his mind when he got a crush on co-star Alana Brady. A small role in the TV movie An Angel Passes By followed, and soon after, McAvoy decided to train at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. To pay his way, for two years he did the early shift at a bakery as a trainee confectioner before heading off to school each morning. In 2000, at the age of 20, he moved to London and soon after, landed a plum role in Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed mini-series, Band of Brothers.
Since then he has appeared in the brilliant Shameless which he starred opposite Anne-Marie Duff, whom he later married, the couple divorced in 2016.
Other roles, before and after Shameless include, Foyle’s War, Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune, State of Play and Shakespeare Re-Told.
On the big screen he was excellent dodgy cop, Bruce Robertson in Irvine Welsh’s Filth, before that he was in The Last King of Scotland as Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, over the pond is more well known as the young Charles Xavier / Professor X in several X-Men flicks.
James voiced Hazel a TV series adaptation of Watership down in 2018,in 2020 he appeared in the feature film Glass, the third in a series of films, the others being, Unbreakable and Split. He ended the year on the small screen featuring in His Dark Materials as well as finding time to star in National Theatre Live: Cyrano de Bergerac, in the title role.
James McAvoy has always had a generous side, he once did a “terrifying” BASE jump from the world’s tallest hospital building in a bid to help raise money for Ugandan children’s charity Retrak, an organisation which assists children on the streets. Additionally, he is a celebrity supporter of the British Red Cross with whom he travelled to Uganda to raise awareness of the projects there. He had become involved with the charity after shooting The Last King of Scotland there for several months and was shocked by what he saw. In February 2007, he visited northern Uganda and spent four days seeing projects supported by the British Red Cross.
James McAvoy is next on our screens in the third series of His Dark Materials, last month he returned to the Glasgow stage for the first time in over 20 years with the touring
Cyrano de Bergerac. In a recent Instagram live he was asked about reprising the role of
Charles Xavier, but simply said no, and looks like he wouldn’t be drawn on it.
In a recent interview he talked about the role of Bruce Robertson the Edinburgh drugged up cop of Irvine Welsh’s Filth, and his accents, saying . “I speak kind of well I suppose and all that, and my accent has changed a hell of a lot over the last, I don’t know how many years it’s been since I’ve moved, 14 years or whatever. It’s still Scottish, but it’s just chilled out a lot.”
Modulating his voice was a matter of survival in the industry — and getting annoyed at always having to repeat himself.
“Basically you just get tired of people going, ‘Pardon me? What did you say?’ Even in England, people would just go, ‘What? What the fuck did he say?’” he remembered, laughing ruefully. “That was the first four or five years of my experience, people going, ‘Dude you talk too fast, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ I understand even now people have problems with it. But my true accent is thicker.”
James is one of a number of Scottish actors being tipped to play the next James Bond, it’s a role I don’t see him in though.
(x) and a bit more detail:
A whooooooole lot of evangelical places should get shut down
If you don’t know, someone please post a link to a blog that discusses this during the time it actually occurred 😏
I was teaching kids today and they got fixated on the usual ‘are they dead now?’ question when I was talking about historical figures. So I was just like ‘Yes, they’re dead now, everyone who was alive in the 1800s is dead now.’ and then one kid was like ‘Except for you’.
I’m sorry to hear about your scalp.
Okay I must clear this up more concretely since this has gone far beyond my circle of folks who have the context of Why This Is Actually Funny, because there are thousands of people here who are like ‘kids are so rude, kids are so evil, I hate kids’ when…
1) Kids are little humans and they’re learning and they should be treated as little humans who are learning. Don’t be a dick to kids. Adults who are assholes to kids is such a bad look, and kids remember that shit.
2) This particular child was being SO earnest and ‘except for you’ was said not as an insult but like ‘oh…you’re the last one left 😢’.
I dress like this everyone:
[ID: image of a person wearing a puffy 18th century shirt, waistcoat, and cravat.]
Thank u, goodnight.
saywhat-politics
Eight years ago, a trio of Ukrainian army brigades fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region made a fatal mistake. They idled their tanks and trucks around a static command post.
Russian drones and eavesdroppers pinpointed the command post and blasted it with artillery.
Today it’s the Russians who are making that same mistake—and the Ukrainians who are exploiting the error. In the two months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine, Kyiv’s forces have located and destroyed no fewer than 31 Russian command and communications posts.
