Springboard to Success

JAMES McAvoy’s recent film roles have included Becoming Jane and The Last King of Scotland.

But it was Atonement that arguably made him Scotland’s best- known screen actor today.

McAvoy, who was raised by his grandparents after his parents’ divorce, applied to the RSAMD after winning a small part in a film about child prostitution.

“It made me a much better actor,” he said. “I went in there able to do an angry young working-class man, and I came out being able to do a hell of a lot more. I wouldn’t have had the career diversity.”

He is currently in Germany filming The Last Station. He stars as Valentin Bulgakov, a naive young secretary sent to work for Leo Tolstoy, played by Christopher Plummer, in the last turbulent year of the great Russian writer’s life.

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