James McAvoy reveals why he refused to star in Harry Potter despite being offered 'ton of money'

James McAvoy. Pic/AFP

Actor James McAvoy recently revealed that he was offered a significant amount to appear in the Harry Potter series early in his career. However, he turned it down to have more stable and persistent work, reported People.

While promoting his film 'Speak No Evil' on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he was asked if he was interested in playing the role in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone or being part of Star Wars project.

"Almost, yeah, I can probably say this one. The very first movie, I think it was who is the is it Tom Riddle in the first one, yeah? But he's like in it... for like a scene in a flashback or something like that? And they had, I simply remember it was right in the beginning of my career," he said.

"I auditioned for it and I think they wanted to put me on a retainer," shared McAvoy. "And they offered me something like it was crazy, I'd hardly done any work and I think maybe 10 other actors or something like that - they wanted to put us on retainer so that they could hold us and keep us to choose later."

Although he didn't open up on the kind of role he was willing to do, he shared that he was offered a hefty sum especially being a emerging actor at that time. "For me, at that time, it was a ton of money, it was like 40,000 pounds or something like that, and I'd done very little work," he added.

But there was a condition and if he had agreed to the contract, he "wouldn't be able to do any work for about seven months" and that is why his agent Ruth Young advised him not to accept the offer.

"And she was like we're going to go do something else, and I ended up doing the play [where] I got booed by a homophobic gentleman," he said. "I did that instead and I think got paid 275 pounds a week. But it was part of the making of me, and I got in acting work. I was actually learning and doing all that," reported People.

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