‘Filth’ Star James McAvoy Reveals Raunchy Comedic Scene And Actually Getting Drunk To Stay In Character; Will He Receive An Acting Award?

"Filth" is the dark comedy film adapted from Irvine Welsh's novel and directed by Jon Baird.  Critics have raved about the movie it has even generated some Awards buzz for James McAvoy.

The young Professor X shares some secrets from the movie in an interview with TotalFilm. On why he took the challenging and somewhat bizarre role: "I thought this was one of the best scripts I've ever read. Certainly in the top three. It's an amazing script - so beautifully written. So entertaining, and vibrant, and dynamic and energetic, scary, harrowing, depressing, upsetting and repellant - and yet compelling.Weirdly as much as it's about this monster, it's about humanity. So there's lots of things. And yet Jon managed to pull it off!"

On the biggest challenge he encountered  for his character: "The biggest challenge for me was the hangovers *laughs*. I don't usually get drunk when I'm making a film, but it was really appropriate to have a hangover every day on this, so I tried to have a hangover most mornings - but it wears you down. It makes you look like rubbish and it made me feel like rubbish, and all of that was quite helpful, actually. Without getting too method acting about it all, it was really helpful."

On what was his favourite scene: "My favourite scene is one in which I'm watching some old camcorder footage of my wife and child baking me a birthday cake. And I'm very upset because I'm estranged from them and I'm crying. 

To make myself feel better, I pick up the phone and call my best mate's weird wife, and then I pretend to be a 1990s comic and chatshow host called Frank Sidebottom - who was from Manchester - and he had a bit of a funny voice (that I can't really do *laughs*). I'm phoning her and I'm crying watching my life, and I'm basically having phone sex whilst pretending to be Frank Sidebottom whilst masturbating and watching what's going on on the telly - and for me, that scene is very Irvine Welsh. 

We managed to get a bit of Irvine on camera there, because it's funny but it's also really surprising and shocking and repugnant yet compelling because it's full of humanity - that's probably my favourite scene in the whole film."