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James McAvoy hopes his cast and crew will consider him a developmental director.
The actor will make his directorial debut with California Shemin, who enjoyed a world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
In an interview on Sunday, September 7th, she admitted that the job was “stressing” but “surprising” within People/EW and Shutterstock Studio, 46-year-old McAvoy. He smiles and adds, “This is the most creative thing I’ve ever done.”
“I’ve loved telling stories as an actor for 30 years, and that’s an extension of that. I now love telling stories as a director.
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Given his decades of experience in front of the camera, McAvoy is known for his range of roles from X-Men to Atonement, Narnia and Beyond, but did he take the approach of directing in a way that doesn’t deal with the cast?
“Look, I probably fell into the same trap as all the directors I’ve done, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Just tell me correctly.’ There’s nothing “right,” he says. “I thought I would shorten my actors in 30 years and I did it to some extent.”
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He said, “I want them to give them to me, and you can’t tell anyone how to become them. Yeah, they play characters, but what I really want is them.
Based on a true story, California Shemin is two Scottish people pretending to be Americans to become hip-hop stars. The cast includes Sams McLean Ross, Samuel Bottomley, Lucy Halliday and Rebekah Murrell.
McAvoy says he wanted to create an actor. The actor says he wants to create a relatively new actor who is “loved and appreciated” during and after filming. On the first day he told them, “You’re here because I wanted you. You’re enough. You’re everything I need, and everything this film needs is within you. You just don’t get in the way of nonsense.”
The star says he was waiting for him to oversee the project that became “this one.”
“I realized I needed to talk about my hometown that felt like my hometown, and it’s a similar economic background to mine,” says McAvoy. “People who had no opportunity like my neighbours had a very confined, close horizon that you couldn’t physically get out.
He continues, “I wanted to talk about all these kinds of things. …The people in these communities are also motivated, dreamy and talented.
