X-Men role came out of the blue for James McAvoy

James McAvoy has come a long way since his Shameless character Steve McBride left the Chatsworth Estate.

One of James McAvoy’s first big acting roles was as Frank Gallagher’s prospective son-in-law in two series of Channel 4’s drama, Shameless.

The character left for Amsterdam in 2005 looking for a better life and fortunes have certainly favoured the actor who played him in the time since.

This week sees the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the second of the movies featuring the backstory of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr destined to be bitter rivals Professor X and Magneto.

The film, which also stars Michael Fassbender and Hugh Jackman, is one of Hollywood’s most-anticipated movies of a blockbuster-filled summer (it is also rumoured to be the most expensive), but James remains refreshingly down to earth about where heading up such a film puts him in the movie star pecking order.

“I’m an actor and I work because I need to but I don’t do it for the attention,” said the Scot. “X-Men came out of the blue. I got called up by Matthew (Vaughn, the director of the first film) and was asked if I wanted to come and read the script? I read the first forty pages and said, `yeah, I’m keen to do it.’

“The comic wasn’t something I was into growing up in Glasgow but I do remember the cartoon. When I was about 12-years-old they started showing it on [BBC Saturday morning show] Live & Kicking. They’d do that thing where they’d show you the first half of the cartoon and then they’d make you wait an hour or so before they showed you the second half of the cartoon, which was really unfair. Anyway, I was a big fan of that and the first two films as well.”

In Days of Future Past the characters from the original X-Men film trilogy join forces with their younger selves in an epic battle stretching across half a century.

The present day X-Men send Wolverine to the past in a desperate effort to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants.

The storyline meant that James got to work with Patrick Stewart, who played the older version of Professor X in the earlier films.

“It was amazing to work with him and something which I never thought would happen. I play the younger him, but I also play him very differently which was one of the things that first appealed to me about the project; how Charles was so different from how he is in the earlier movies.

“I really responded to that, and that I wouldn’t be playing a young Patrick Stewart even though I’m a big of Star Trek.”

James left his grandparents’ house in Glasgow aged 20 [his parents split when he was seven and he moved in with his nan and grandparents]. Now 35, he lives modestly in North London with his wife Anne-Marie Duff (who he met on the set of Shameless) and the couple’s son Brendan, who will turn four next month.

While not quite scaling James’ Hollywood heights, Anne-Marie has also fashioned a fine career for herself since leaving Shameless, appearing in numerous films and TV dramas and nominated for a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA last year for her role as John Lennon’s estranged mum in Nowhere Boy.

“We give each other advice and that’s one of the benefits of being married to someone who is in your profession,” said James. “I think that’s always a bonus.”

Hugh Jackman is the tie that binds the days of future and past together in the new X-Men film.

He has now played Wolverine seven times over 14 years, a record for one actor playing a comic book character, something he describes as an “incredible and rare gift.”

But the Wolverine we encounter in Days of Future Past is a different, calmer, beast than the one we’ve met on previous occasions.

“Logan sees himself, for the first time in a long while, as part of the X-Men team,” Hugh says.

“He has come to terms with the fact that his anger is his greatest weapon. He is a warrior at peace with himself now. Being the only mutant with the capacity to heal himself, Logan volunteers to travel back in time to prevent the mutant apocalypse that the X-Men of the future are facing.”

Australian Hugh was especially glad to meet up with his former co-stars Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and Halle Berry but it was one of the newer members of the X-Men fraternity who left the most lasting impression.

“I was walking down the Blue Hallway with Nicholas Hoult [who plays Hank McCoy/Beast in the film] and he said, `I remember seeing you in the first X-Men when I was about eight years old.’ That made me realize how iconic the X-Men universe has become.”

Our verdict 4/5

You may need Professor X’s intellect to work out everything that is going on, particularly in relation to the original trilogy of movies, but X-Men: Days of Future Past builds on the foundations laid in First Class.

Michael Fassbender nails it as Magneto and his on-screen “bromance” with James McAvoy continues to blossom. Stealing the show, however, is American Horror Story’s Evan Peters as kleptomaniac Quicksilver, whose brief appearance is comically slowed down and set to music so we don’t blink and miss it.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is at cinemas from Thursday.