James McAvoy secured a cottage to himself while making Atonement by telling director Joe Wright that living apart from the cast would suit his character’s outsider status. His real concern was spending all his downtime with the people he worked with.
Recalling the 2007 drama during a Reddit AMA, McAvoy said Wright wanted the main cast and key crew to share a house. The cast included Keira Knightley, Juno Temple, Benedict Cumberbatch and Vanessa Redgrave. Communal dinners were a nightly fixture, with parties on weekends.
“I felt so socially awkward that I didn’t really want to do this, I didn’t want to hang out with everybody 24/7, but I knew it was important to Joe, so I was like, ‘How can I get away with this?’” McAvoy wrote.
His solution was to make the case through his character’s class position: “I said to Joe, my character in the movie is lower, working class, and he sounds like the others, but he isn’t like them, he’s not really accepted by the upper class, so I think I should live somewhere else on my own.”
That got him a cottage on the manor’s grounds, close enough to join the others when he wanted company while keeping his own space. “I got to walk up through the manor grounds every morning and it was great, and I got my privacy and got to dip in and socialise only when I wanted to, not 24/7.”
“Don’t tell Joe. But yeah we had a great time on Atonement.”
