Here are some new photos of your Scottish Thunder boyfriend James McAvoy. He’s promoting his new film, Filth, at the Edinburgh Film Festival in Scotland. James didn’t pose by himself for very long – I think the blonde is Shauna Macdonald …? That’s what WENN says, but who knows. We discussed Filth a few weeks ago when the trailer came out – go here to see. The film is an adaptation of an Irvine Welsh book, and it looks like a really crazy, gross, amazing film in the vein of Trainspotting. James is super-proud of the film too, probably because it’s one of the rare times that he’s a flat-out leading man and because he gets to use his natural Scottish accent. Here are some cool quotes from James:

James McAvoy claims he won the role of a psychotic detective in a movie adaptation of the novel Filth because he is cheaper than fellow Scot Ewan McGregor. The 34-year-old star said there was a limited pool for directors wanting a genuine Scottish voice.

“I benefited from this before, with The Last King of Scotland. Unless you want to pick someone who can’t do the accent … there are only four or five of us you can go and find.”

They include Dougray Scott, Kevin McKidd and Ewan McGregor “and those guys were really expensive,” he said, adding: “That’s how I got The Last King. There was nobody who would do it for the money I would and had some experience.”

But Glasgow-born McAvoy, who now lives in north London and has made international hits such as X-Men since The Last King, said he really wanted to play Bruce Robertson even though the character is in his mid-40s. He bulked up with Guinness, Coca Cola, burgers and fish and chips to look “like a bag of smashed crabs” for the role. “I was aware I was young casting for this and I did want to look like s–t. Usually I play characters that are maybe punching above their weight physically. It was quite nice to do a job where I look minging.”

But it did mean he ended up ill. “I went to a doctor because I was having a lot of trouble with my bowels and he said, ‘either you’ve got ulcerative colitis or your body is rejecting what you’re trying to do to it’.”

The film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel tells how Robertson’s life unravels as he and colleagues, including Jamie Bell and Imogen Poots, investigate a murder in Edinburgh. But director-screenwriter Jon Baird has brought the policeman’s mental ill health to the fore. McAvoy said there was a real truthfulness in the depiction of Robertson’s breakdown that chimed with his own “prolific” experience of people with mental illness. “They’re not all sad,” he said. “There’s an energy.”

Yet the film was not naturalistic. “You take a truth of a kernel and make an arty tree grow out of it.”

[From The Standard]

Minging = foul, apparently. It’s weird to think that James works so much because he works cheap. I always thought that Ewan McGregor probably works pretty cheap too, considering Ewan still does a surprising amount of independent films and small “passion projects”. So, James was probably just making a joke about the money. After all, James is a proper movie star nowadays with X-Men and lush period films.

James also tells The Scotsman that he’s extremely “proud” of how the film turned out after a five-year wait to make it. He said upon reading the script, “It’s inspiring to have so many ideas in your head on the first reading and to think: ‘thank Christ there’s something out there that’s really bold and brave and not afraid about the fact it is potentially controversial or offensive. It’s a virtue that it is. There’s not much out there at the moment, particularly with English speaking cinema. Everybody is hedging their bets dramatically. That doesn’t make for good drama.” You can read more of that interview here.

Photos courtesy of WENN.