James McAvoy on Speak No Evil, directing aspirations and Atonement’s steamy library scene • Journal • A Magazine • , Life in canada

McAvoy (and his on-screen wife, Aisling Franciosi) is the menacing obstacle in the way of the American family. Though he is threatening, his character must also have a charisma that draws them in and keeps them around despite other warning signs. McAvoy likens his approach in finding that balance to fishing.

“You gotta keep ’em on the hook,” he observes. “You’ve gotta reel them in, but it takes a long time to reel them in. The whole time, you’ve gotta tease the hook. You can’t just yank it. Otherwise you rip through the fish and you lose it. The whole film is like a bow being drawn until it’s at this point of tension for an hour solid, and everything’s gonna explode.”

According to McAvoy, there are also “loads of laughs and loads of scares. But somehow, those laughs and those scares don’t dissipate the tension. They only make it worse. That was a real tightrope walk, because you can’t go too far into the comedy. You can’t go too far into the scary. You’ve gotta keep on the tightrope so that both things are potentially impossible at all times.”

Davis echoes McNairy’s sentiment of simply enjoying watching all the colors of charisma and menace show themselves in McAvoy’s performance. “There’s a ‘smile that becomes a sneer that becomes a glare that becomes a smile again’ moment where I’m like, ‘How does a face do that?’” Davis asks with incredulity. “He’s constantly surprising, ’cause he’s really enjoying what he’s doing. He doesn’t think, ‘Okay, good, I got the performance that I’m gonna do and then I’m gonna replicate that.’ Instead, he thinks, ‘Okay, I did that, and then now I’ll do this and then I’ll do that.’ He makes it so dynamic and surprising.”