James McAvoy steps into Patrick Stewart’s blockbuster shoes in X-Men: First Class

If you can judge a man by the vehicles he owns, Scots actor James McAvoy is a cross between Rosetta Stone Languages early Marlon Brando and vintage Richard Briers – The Wild One meets The Mild One. The everyday Mr McAvoy owns a big old family car, is dad to a one-year-old son, husband to fellow actor Anne-Marie Duff, lives in north London, doesn't want to move to LA, but can see himself mooching along happily in the Trossachs some day. His alter-ego has a Triumph Street Triple motorcycle, described by its makers as oozing agility and attitude, and a career that's currently registering 100mph on the speedometer. After a taster of high-octane action in Wanted, the actor now has what every boy racer covets a starring role in a superhero blockbuster. X-Men: First Class takes the Marvel Comics characters back to their 1960s beginnings. McAvoy, star of films such as Atonement and The Last King Of Scotland, plays the young Charles Xavier, aka Professor X, the man who will become mentor to mutants who want to use their superpowers for the common good. Directed by Matthew Vaughn of Kick-Ass fame, and weaving in epochal events such as the Cuban missile crisis, X-Men: First Class is being seen as the first part in an ambitious trilogy. There's a lot, in short, riding on the kid from Drumchapel. It's just as well the 32-year-old likes jumping off tall buildings, a tale we'll return to later. For now, McAvoy is explaining how he first got into the X-Men as a teenager. The cartoon was really fun. Exciting and daring and action packed, but fun. That's what these films should be. Not that there's anything wrong with them being serious and worthy at the same time, he adds. I like to jump off things. Any situation in which you are nervous is like jumping off something Rosetta Stone V3 so just do it quickly' The PS is typical of McAvoy in interview mode. Never dull, always charming, but in the manner of his Celtic hero, Jimmy Johnstone, he jinks his way through answers without straying too far off course or revealing too much. But now and again he'll make a daring run down the wing and, in the blur, you catch a glimpse of the private McAvoy, boy and man. (How private are McAvoy and Duff? It took almost a year before Duff revealed that their son's name was Brendan.) We meet in London a few days after the Baftas, an occasion when he stood before an audience of fellow stars and directors and fluffed his lines, repeating the line the nominees are when he should have launched into and the winner is. But he bounced back immediately and generally looked about as relaxed as if he was at his granny's for tea. He's hugely confident in a most un-Scottish way. Always has been, it seems. Asked if he'd ever felt like one of the X-Men outcasts, he says once, when as a teenager he went to a fancy ball in Rosetta Stone Spanish Glasgow. I felt completely out of my depth. They were all very nice, but it was just all very posh. I'd never met kids with that much money before. I had to wear a tie and a suit, so I wore my school trousers, a stripy Levi shirt, which I thought was really cool, a burgundy felt sports jacket, and I borrowed my friend Peter's yellow and green pineapple silk tie. When he walked in the door he found the event was wall to wall kilts, tuxedos and ball gowns. Rather thank slink away he got stuck in socially. Totally. I was sitting at a table, chatting away, all that kind of stuff. Most people were nice but most people were kind of laughing at the way I was dressed. McAvoy was brought up by his grandparents and mother after his parents split when he was seven. Despite reports of his being Rosetta Stone Languages estranged from his father, his life in Glasgow surrounded by other family and friends must have been happy, judging by the wrench he felt when he left. He reveals this when I ask if he'd ever go to the US to live. No. I've already moved from one country to England. I don't want to do it again, [that] was hard enough. It took me about three years to get used to London.