NAKED AMBITION; James McAvoy is Shameless about his love for baring all.

Byline: By Rick Fulton, Showbiz Editor

PERHAPS it's something in our water, but James McAvoy has joined fellow Scot Ewan McGregor as an actor who likes stripping off.

Like his more famous countryman, Shameless and Narnia star James is fast gaining a reputation for going nude on stage and film.

Now, in his new movie The Last King Of Scotland, fans will see even more of the 27-year-old in a graphic sex scene.

Many men would shirk from flashing their all - but James likes it.

He said: "Yeah, I like to get naked. I like being naked, I like being naked on stage, more than I like being naked on film.

"Naked on film is not that fun, but naked on stage is really quite freeing.

"On stage there's nowhere to hide, you're completely vulnerable. When you're completely vulnerable, it can't get any worse, can it?"

In face, his only blushes over the matter came in 2001 while starring in the play Privates On Parade - and only then because he spotted his wee sister in the audience.

He laughed: "I had to be naked for 10 minutes for this play and I noticed, 'Oh, that's my sister. She's head level with my c***, oh no.

"She's my younger sister, which made it so much worse."

But James doesn't just share a lust for nudity with Ewan McGregor.

Nowadays, they are also vying for the title of Scotland's best-known young actor.

Glaswegian James currently has six films in the pipeline.

And there are already Oscar whispers about The Last King Of Scotland - in which he plays Nicholas Garrigan, the Scottish doctor of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker.

The controversial film goes on general release in January after its premiere at the opening of this year's London Film Festival on October 18.

Before that, he'll star in the adaptation of David Nicholls's hit novel Starter For Ten, about a working class student's attempts to make it on the University Challenge team during his first year at Bristol University in the mid 1980s.

Behind it are movie giants Tom Hanks and Sam Mendes - who last collaborated on the stunning The Road to Perdition.

They sat up and noticed James after his film-stealing role as half-man, half-goat Mr Tumnus in The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.

Now the rest of Hollywood seems to be following suit, if the Academy Award nomination rumours are true.

For now, James thinks that kind of glory is too much to even contemplate.

He said: "I think so. I think that Forest is better for that because he's being doing this longer.

"He doesn't need it for his career, but he deserves it for this performance.

"I'm certainly not going to be losing any sleep if I don't get nominated for this.

"I liked playing this role and getting this job in the first place and developing the character as a professional.

"That is an award for me, and that's more than I could have ever hoped for when I started acting. When I went through three years at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama I thought, 'If I get any work at all I'll be lucky.'

Finding work is obviously no problem for James, but one downside of success is that his private life is under constant scrutiny.

He is happily engaged to his former Shameless co-star Anne-Marie Duff.

But he admits to not knowing if he's ready for the global fame his forthcoming roles will bring him.

He said: "I don't go to all of the red-carpet events unless I'm involved in them. I don't open all the envelopes and I don't go to all the parties.

"I'm a very private person and I like to keep it private. So, hopefully, I'll try to keep it very quiet."

James can keep his feet on the ground by thinking of The Last King Of Scotland as his debut role, in one way at least - it's the first time he has played a Scottish character.

He has never before played a Scot - not even in the TV adaptation of Macbeth last year.

Nevertheless, he is a patriotic Scot.

James was born in Scotstoun, Glasgow, then, following his parents' separation when he was seven, brought up in nearby Drumchapel by his grandparents.

He laughed: "The weirdest thing about playing Nicholas was I thought it was going be easier, because it's closer to me.

"But, if anything, that makes it more difficult. There's nothing to hide behind.

"I'm extremely proud to be Scottish. I like the fact that we're glorious in defeat.

"We can take a beating and come out with most amazing, poetic and musical playing. We really do get defeated gloriously.

"We play amazing stuff in defeat every single time. That's being Scottish. That's why it's important for the Western audience that the protagonist of this film is Scottish.

"I'm Scottish and I come from a tribal system. I started there.

"Then I am then chosen by the English and so I'm British because I'm conquered.

"I've been raped. I've been pillaged and there's been hundreds of years of that.

"It's only in the last 300 years that we've not been getting completely pummelled.

"So I go into this and I am white and I am from the West and from an economically powerful country - but I am different.

"I get you. I get your suffering and I won't treat you like everyone else. I will have more respect. That's why the film benefits from making Garrigan Scottish."

The three months James spent filming in Uganda marked the first f time he'd been to Africa.

He said: "It was an incredible experience. "I'd never been anywhere so different from where I come from... and I've been in a lot of places.

"I've been in some real exotic places, but never anywhere quite so different and never anywhere so impoverished.

"Uganda is relatively mild compared to some of the places around that. I find that very powerful, very affecting.

James was taught about Amin at school, but wasn't allowed to read Giles Foden's book on which the movie is based.

But he did get to find out about Nicholas - an amalgamation of four real people, one of whom is from Scotland.

Bizarrely, another inspiration is Channel 4 news anchor Jon Snow. He was duped by Amin into thinking he wasn't a tyrant during one of his first jobs working in Uganda as a news journalist.

However, melting four people into one wasn't the hardest part of the job for James - that was a torture scene.

In it, Garrigan is hung by his nipples from meat hooks.

He revealed it was excruciating to film - and even made him faint for real.

To add to his distress, shooting took place on the same day as last year's London bombings and James couldn't make contact with his family.

He said: "Nobody could get through to their family back in London.

"We were very distraught and very, very upset and worried. But we got on with filming anyway.

"It was terrifying. Everybody was already scared and upset by the bombings then we had to do this horrific scene - and I passed out on the first take.

"I completely blacked out, I was hanging up there and I just blackedout.

"I'd had this little saddle on a crane that raised me up so that the wires wouldn't tear through the rubber prosthetic and there would be no weight on my chest.

"It was all pushing me up in this chair, we CGI'd it out later.

"I got up there and I just blacked out and fell off this chair and was hanging upside down.

"I just about smashed my head on the ground as well because they all thought I was doing some weird acting thing. They were like, 'Ooh, don't touch him.'

"I've never blacked out in my life but I was in shock for the rest of the day, I was just gone."

The weirdness didn't stop there. James finally managed to get through to his family but then had to do another scene where Forest, as Amin, grabs his head.

James added: "He tells me that this is real and this room is real and he basically tells me he's gonna kill me and he knows about killing.

"We did that after we did the torture, so I was just left in shock.

"It was almost as if it left me feeling closer to how someone must feel after being brutally savaged like that."

Clearly, The Last King Of Scotland is a very different kind of film to Narnia.

Following that success, a huge chunk of James's fan base consists of the under-eights.

He laughed: "The kids want to see my legs and are quite shocked to learn that I don't have hairy legs.

"The world in which they live is completely redefined.

"They start to ask themselves what their mother is, because she's a liar."

'I like being naked on stage. It is quite freeing, you're completely vulnerable - so it can't get any worse'

CAPTION(S):

PLAUDITS: James McAvoy is already tipped for Oscar glory for his role as Idi Amin's doctor in The Last King Of Scotland, main, and with Forest Whitaker, above. He also stars in University Challenge tale Starter For Ten, top

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Publication:	Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland)
Geographic Code:	4EUUK
Date:	Oct 4, 2006
Words:	1561
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