BOURNE TO BE WILD
James McAvoy admits he prefers playing a spy ‘in the sewer’ to super-smooth agents like Bond
HE’S been tipped to be the next 007 but James McAvoy reckons he’s more like a “minging” Jason Bourne.
Despite starring with stunning Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, the role needed no suave makeover for the A-lister from Drumchapel, Glasgow.
In the film, he dresses down as grubby spymaster chief David Percival, who is introduced to the audience with a hangover and two girls chained to his bed in a flat.
McAvoy revealed his Percival is a more realistic spy than James Bond.
He said: “Bond isn’t even really a spy. He walks into a room and everyone knows who he is.
“So everybody thinks: ‘Oh s***, it’s James Bond, he’s got a licence to kill, better watch it’.
“He’s not getting any information. He can’t go undercover. How is that spying?”
McAvoy played up the essential contrast with his glamorous co-star, saying: “Charlize was so cool, I knew I had to make my guy filthier. Not cool filthy but like he hasn’t changed his knickers in two weeks.
“Our film is grubby. It’s not like the representations of the spy world you find in Bourne. It’s Bourne in the sewer. It’s minging Bourne.”
Atomic Blonde, a Cold War action film, set in Berlin in 1989, stars Theron as lesbian MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton.
McAvoy revealed the seediness of the spy scene was an essential part of its success. He said: “I had read a really great thing about how MI6 tried to recruit agents after World War II. They looked for drug addicts, alcoholics and gay men.
“They liked drug addicts and alcoholics because they knew they would burn out or possibly die in their 50s. So they weren’t going to retire with a lot of secrets to keep.
“They liked gay men because they needed people experienced and skilled at keeping massive secrets.”