- James McAvoy underwent an 18-hour hair extension session to prepare for “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
- The actor wanted to look like he smoked “a lot of weed,” according to a new interview.
- McAvoy also made a point of “injecting a massive ego” into Professor X to underscore his evolution.
When James McAvoy took on the role of a younger Professor X once again in the 2014 film “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” it was important to the actor that audiences understand his character’s physical and psychological journey, which it included a major makeover to differentiate himself from the older character, played by Patrick Stewart.
“I wanted to have long hair, and I wanted to look like I smoke a lot of weed and maybe I did something a little stronger in the ’70s and sat in my purple haze just to show how far that journey would take to make him Patrick. Stewart,” McAvoy said in a video interview with GQ posted on wednesday.
For McAvoy, who had received a haircut prior to production, that meant sitting through a lengthy 18-hour hair extension session to achieve the shaggy, long-haired look that ended up in the film.
“I sat there for 18 hours and just went crazy,” McAvoy recalled. “But in the end, I looked like Professor X in ‘Days of Future Past’.”
The actor also emphasized “injecting a massive ego” into his character to underscore Professor X’s evolution from a brash younger man to the calmer, wiser and more measured authority figure he would eventually become as the leader. of the X-Men.
“I think one of the defining aspects of what Patrick did and what Charles ultimately becomes is his selflessness,” McAvoy said. “But we had seen him in four movies, and now more with ‘Logan’ as well, which Patrick did. So I thought, ‘What do we want to do? Do we want to do that again?’ We get to go back in time and show that he had to become that person, so the ego was a huge thing, because his disinterest was so strong in the other movies.”
