Fear of Fame

If you weren't averting your eyes during the final torture scene in "The Last King of Scotland," you might recall him as the naive physician who got strung up by his nipples after crossing Forest Whitaker's detonative Idi Amin. (Prosthetic chest, by the way, though McAvoy did pass out during the first take, after he stopped breathing to help make his pain appear more realistic.)

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In "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," he was Mr. Tumnus, the shirtless guy -- well, half-guy, half-goat -- with the hooves, horizontal ears and long tail. Also in the realm of filmic fantasies: He made out with the luminous Anne Hathaway in "Becoming Jane."

Some other movies on his résumé: "Starter for 10" (trivia nerd at college), "Wimbledon" (Paul Bettany's bumbling idiot of a brother), "Rory O'Shea Was Here" (noisy punk in motorized wheelchair).

Okay, so clearly, he hasn't yet achieved the celebrity of his cinematic antecedents.

Consider that McAvoy has been called the next Hugh Grant, or the new Albert Finney. More dizzying praise: Sam Mendes, the Oscar-winning executive producer of "Starter for 10," has said that McAvoy possesses "the wit and charm of a young Dustin Hoffman" and "the empathetic everyman quality of a Matt Damon."

"Being Dustin Hoffman and Matt Damon's love child -- 'Bourne Ultimatum' spawned by 'Tootsie' -- would be brilllllllllliant," McAvoy says. "But, ehhhm, yeah, I don't really know. The fact that people are saying nice things like that is kind of incredible and weird, like it's happening to somebody else. But it's nerve-racking because now you're expected to be good in the next thing you do. I'm feeling that pressure a little bit."

Forget what People says. McAvoy isn't an archetypal leading man. In his rugged work boots, he's maybe 5-foot-8. His skin is pale and he has an imperfect set of teeth that could stand to be both straightened and cleaned. (He steadfastly refuses, the very idea of getting cosmetic work done is too disgustingly Hollywood.)

His face? Almost extremely handsome; it's as if he's the plainer-looking younger brother of a devastatingly appealing man. And there's a weariness to his visage, owing mostly to a pair of soft blue eyes underscored by what he refers to as "black bags." As a teenager, McAvoy says, "lots of my relatives were convinced I was a glue-sniffer" because of his pasty skin and those dark, deep circles beneath his eyes.

But looks aside: "He's a damn good actor, which is the main reason I cast him," says "Atonement" director Joe Wright.

Wright first saw McAvoy six years ago in a play at the Hampstead Theatre in London. A recent graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, McAvoy was new to London's theater scene and made an immediate impression, says Wright. "He was just stunning. You could certainly see the seeds of what he'd eventually achieve."

Knightley, who plays McAvoy's romantic obsession in "Atonement," says in an e-mail that he's a "wonderful actor with an incredible intelligence" and "a truthfulness . . . that's totally compelling to watch."

So what makes him so good? Why, in the complicated calculus of cinema, is McAvoy> almost every other young actor?