James McAvoy Doesn’t Believe in God. That Didn’t Stop Him from Making the Spiritual Drama ‘Faith’

The Scottish actor tells IndieWire about his new spiritual drama, which just premiered at TIFF, and why he opted to become an actor and not a priest.

When James McAvoy was growing up in Glasgow, he toyed with becoming a priest.

“I thought about it fucking seriously,” McAvoy told IndieWire during a recent interview, his Scottish burr coming through thickest as he drops an expletive that would scandalize a man of the cloth. “I wanted to travel. I wanted to get away, and I thought the priesthood might be a good way to do that. I specifically thought about missionary work because I thought I could travel to incredible places.”

He stopped hearing the call to join the church when he turned 13 and puberty hit. “I don’t think I quite appreciated the idea of celibacy,” McAvoy said. “When I started thinking about girls, the priesthood sort of drifted away.”

When McAvoy opted to take a role as Michael, a mysterious stranger who helps a grieving mother (“Adolescence” breakout Erin Doherty) in “Faith,” a new spiritual drama that recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, colleagues asked if he was religious. As the title suggests, “Faith” grapples with belief and the concept of an afterlife, though it does so in more ambiguous terms than the standard Angel Studios release.

“I’m definitely not religious and I’m not particularly spiritual,” McAvoy said. “But I do fucking wank on and eulogize about acting and art and all those things in a way that you could point the finger at me and say I’m kind of spiritual about that. Hopefully, I’ve managed to emancipate myself from Catholic guilt, but sometimes I still bear its scars.”

“On set, people would ask, ‘Do you believe in God?’ And I was like, ‘Don’t think so,'” he added. “And they’re like, ‘Oh, why are you doing this film?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I do films about superheroes and wizards, and they don’t exist.'”

Instead, McAvoy found himself drawn to the low-budget production because of the way Paul Andrew Williams, the writer and director of “Faith,” dealt with otherworldly themes in a grounded way. “My character has a secret, but it felt like the film had a secret too, and that was compelling,” McAvoy said. “There’s a mystery to the whole thing.”

Michael exudes caring and compassion, but he has his own demons that he’s dealing with. Despite the inner turmoil he depicts, McAvoy says the part came to him very easily, and he credits Doherty, whose character is dealing with a devastating loss, with handling the emotional pyrotechnics.

“It just flowed out,” McAvoy said. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-odd years, and I’ve definitely learned that what people want to hear is that you made it as hard as possible for yourself. You know you lived in a coffin for six months to understand what it was like to die. … It just doesn’t feel like acting sometimes, and that sounds like I’m patting myself on the back. It just felt like all I needed to do was be relaxed.”

That wasn’t the case with McAvoy’s next project, the Sky series “Meantime,” in which he plays a murder suspect with many vices and hangups.

“I was in literally every single scene,” McAvoy said. “I was playing somebody who was a narcotic and alcohol addict. It’s a very dark comedy, but the darkness of it frightened me. There’s substance abuse and child loss and ultimately the darkness gets to you after four months working on something like that.”

Throughout his career, McAvoy has moved between smaller indie fare like “Faith” and big-budget blockbusters like the “X-Men” movies and “Wanted.” The trailers may be bigger when he’s playing Professor X, but both experiences have similar challenges.

“You can do a $200 million movie or a $2 million movie, and the same shit happens,” McAvoy said. “There’s never enough time. Or the dollies are broken, or the catering sucks.”

But McAvoy is more sympathetic to the stresses that the filmmakers who hire him are experiencing, having now moved into directing with his first feature, the musical biopic “California Schemin’,” which opens in the U.S. this fall.

“There’s so much internal push, push, push when you’re directing,” McAvoy said. “You’re always thinking, ‘I need to get this performance out of this actor, but I need them to remain relaxed. I can’t rush them. But at the same time, if I don’t get these three extra shots that I’m in danger of losing today, we’re screwed.’ You always face these impossible choices.’”

“Faith” premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.