James McAvoy nearly appeared in the Harry Potter movies!
In a new interview, the 45-year-old actor revealed that he was in the running to play a character in second movie of the franchise, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but dropped out at the advice of his agent since it would have kept him out of other work for seven months.
Keep reading to find out more…“I was nearly in Harry Potter. Almost,” James shared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, before revealing that he was up for the role of Tom Riddle.
“I remember it was right at the beginning of my career. I auditioned for it and I think they wanted to put me on a retainer,” James explained. “I’d hardly done any work and me and I think ten other actors, they wanted to put us in a retainer so that they could hold us and keep us to choose later.”
James then revealed that he was offered a “ton of money” to accept the role.
“And they offered quite a lot of money. For me at that time, it was a ton of money,” James said. “It was like £40,000 ($52,000) or something like that. I’d done very little work and I wouldn’t be able to do any work for about seven months, I think.”
If he agreed to the retainer, James wouldn’t have been able to do any other work for seven months. At the advice of his agent, whom he’s still with now, James declined the offer.
“She was like, ‘Absolutely not. Don’t do that. We’re gonna go do something else,” James recalled, sharing that he ended up doing a play where he got “booed by a homophobic gentleman.” “I did that instead and got paid I think £275 ($360) a week a week.”
He then added that he has no regrets on passing on the Harry Potter role, saying, “It was part of the making of me. I was actually learning and doing all that.”
As Harry Potter fans know, the role of Tom Riddle in Chamber of Secrets ended up going to Christian Coulson.
During the same podcast interview, James revealed that he took on the role in Split after an Oscar-winning actor dropped out at the “last minute.”
