James McAvoy made a big splash in the film Atonement but has since gone on to have a stellar career with the X-Men film series, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, It: Chapter 2 and a host of other films. In fact, he could have landed a big role much earlier in his career. McAvoy auditioned for the role of Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, however, his agent persuaded him not to take the role and instead it went to Christian Coulson.
Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast: “I was nearly in Harry Potter. I auditioned for it, and I think they wanted to put me on a retainer. I’d hardly done any work, and they wanted to keep us on hold with a bunch of other actors so they could choose later.
“They offered quite a lot of money. For me at that time, it was a ton of money—like 40 thousand pounds. But I wouldn’t have been able to work for about seven months.”
Would you have liked to see McAvoy take a crack at becoming the Dark Lord?