James McAvoy on How He Bonded with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen on ‘X-Men’ Set

James McAvoy had a unique way of bonding with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen on the set of X-Men: Days of Future Past.

The California Schemin’ star, 46, revealed at New York Comic Con that he got to spend “a whole afternoon” with Stewart, 85, and McKellen, 86 — who played Professor X and Magneto, respectively, in the X-Men films in the 2000s — but it didn’t exactly go the way he thought it would.

“I was getting hair extensions put in, and I went into the trailer, and I think Patrick was cooking and Sir Ian was sitting with his feet up in the recliner,” recalled McAvoy, who played Professor X from 2011 to 2019.

“I had just finished doing Macbeth on the West End in London, and I go up in the trailer and Ian’s like, ‘You’ve just come off the stage, James. You’ve just done Macbeth, haven’t you?’ And he’s like, ‘Come on, let’s all do a bit.’ Because Patrick had done it as well.”

McAvoy said he was taken aback by the request, especially since he had wrapped the play just “two weeks before” and found it tough to call the lines back to mind.

“I couldn’t remember a single line, and these two are like banging back and forward [their] favorite bits from Macbeth,” he shared. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ It’s just a different kind of actor, a different kind of machine.”

McAvoy went on to say that he felt “lucky” that he — along with Michael Fassbender, who played Magneto in the X-Men films in the 2010s — got to have a “crossover” with the previous cast of the X-Men films and meet their counterparts. 

He added that he was “one of the few members of the two casts who really got to do that.” Stewart and McKellen, along with original X-Men stars Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, James Marsden and Anna Paquin returned for X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Since starring together as the same character, McAvoy and Stewart have dabbled in a friendly rivalry over the years — and it still continues to this day. 

When asked at Comic Con what his most “meaningful” interactions with fans were, the Glass actor joked, “When they tell me that I was better than Patrick, that means so much. It really resonates with me.”

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The Star Trek actor has also thrown his own fair share of jabs at his Professor X counterpart. He previously jested on Late Night with Seth Meyers that he had beef with McAvoy after the Narnia actor was asked how it felt to be stepping into his shoes and he responded, “I’ll bury him.”

“Good man. Yes, I vote for that. He’s outstanding,” Stewart said with a smile. Elsewhere in the interview, he added, “I have enormous respect for James McAvoy. He’s a great actor.”