James McAvoy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1979. His parents got divorced when McAvoy was quite young, so he stayed with his mother. She suffered from poor health, though, so he grew up with his grandparents, who lived in public housing in a rough neighborhood. It was a challenging life to say the least.
Things turned around after McAvoy got a role in a movie called The Near Room when he was only 15 years old. At the time, he was not actually interested in acting professionally.
