James McAvoy was almost a Harry Potter star!
In a new interview, James recalled that he almost got the role of Tom Riddle aka Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
“I was nearly in Harry Potter. Almost,” James revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“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 detailed.
“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,” the Split star continued.
“And they offered quite a lot of money. For me at that time, it was a ton of money,” James confessed. “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.”
Had the Speak No Evil star agreed, he’d have been on retainer for seven months. He ended up declining the offer at the advice of his agent.
“She was like, ‘Absolutely not. Don’t do that. We’re gonna go do something else,” James shared, adding that he instead did a play where he “got paid I think £275 ($360) a week.”
James McAvoy noted that he has no regrets about declining the role in Harry Potter, saying, “It was part of the making of me. I was actually learning and doing all that.”
