How Best Actor McAvoy came back with a blast’

After the star’s triumph at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, he talks to Mick Curtis about his barnstorming performance as Cyrano, and how the industry is finally changing for the better

MY KEEN admiration for actor James McAvoy goes up a notch when he comes onto our Zoom call using the screen name "Mr Fantastico". It looks like he's in a hotel room. "Naw, I'm at home. We just painted our ceiling to look like a hotel," says the 43-year-old in his still-broad Glaswegian accent.

After we speak, McAvoy is flying to Rome for a four-day stint playing Pontius Pilate on Jeymes Samuel's film The Book of Clarence. This commitment meant he had to miss Sunday's 66th Evening Standard Theatre Awards in association with Garrard at the Ivy, where he was named Best Actor for his stunning lead performance in Jamie Lloyd's production of Cyrano de Bergerac. "I'm gutted not to be there," he says. On the night, compere Sheridan Smith read out a message he had sent: "Drink something toxic and get your dance on." McAvoy had already won the award once before, in 2015, for his explosive performance as the Earl of Gurney in Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, also directed by Lloyd. He is delighted and surprised to win again for Cyrano. "I've been living with this show since 2019, pre-pandemic - a different version of myself, a different decade," he says, "and I didn't think we would be eligible".

Cyrano initially opened to five-star reviews at the Playhouse Theatre in 2019. "We had a young cast, a lot of people making their debuts and we were all going to get to go across the Atlantic and take it to New York, woo woo!" McAvoy recalls. "Then that got taken away, as so many things did, by the pandemic. But we decided we were going to do it if theatre ever came back again - and for a long time it was a big 'if" Cyrano made it to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this year, after a second.

London run at the Pinter Theatre, and a week in McAvoy's native Glasgow (as the 2020 and 2021 Evening Standard Awards were cancelled, this year's judging panel decided such a remarkable show deserved consideration for the run at the Pinter).