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James McAvoy explains the surprisingly intense debate behind Professor X’s 'finger to the temple' move in the X-Men movies
X-Men actor James McAvoy fought for Charles Xavier to do Xavier’s iconic “finger thing”
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When it comes to the X-Men, displaying their powers is easy for some of the actors. With Storm, Halle Berry had to move her arms. With Cyclops, James Marsden just had to let his visors do the work. With Wolverine…well…Hugh Jackman just had to stand there looking like Hugh Jackman.
When James McAvoy was cast as Charles Xavier for X-Men: First Class, he had more trouble figuring out what to do when the character used his psychic powers.
“I’m very expressive with my eyebrows,” James McAvoy says during a panel at New York Comic Con. “They are thinning as I get older, which really worries me because I don’t know if I can do the same kind of work anymore. But hopefully CGI or AI can help me out with that.”
When his eyebrows weren’t enough, McAvoy remembered seeing Xavier put his fingers against his forehead on the 1992 X-Men animated series. He thought that was perfect, but 20th Century Fox wasn’t sure.
“I found that I was acting too much and I was doing too much, which is why I employed the finger, because I thought as soon as I put the finger up there, I don’t need to do anything. When I first said I wanted to do the finger, it was a discussion. We had the finger conversation. I’m not joking, by the way.”
“I don’t think [Patrick Stewart] ever did that in the other films, and he does do it in the comic books sometimes, and he did do it in the cartoons. I was like, ‘Okay, it’s something that he never did. I’ve got to do it’ And there was a whole discussion about fingering myself on camera. I would say I’m surprised, but I’m not surprised.”
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