James McAvoy reveals he was nearly cast as major Harry Potter villain

McAvoy said he was offered ‘a ton of money’ for the role

James McAvoy says he was nearly cast as the major villain in the Harry Potter film series in the early years of his career.

Appearing on the latest episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the 45-year-old Scottish actor shared that he had auditioned for the role of Tom Riddle, who later becomes known as the evil wizard Voldemort (played by Ralph Fiennes).

“I remember it was right at the beginning of my career,” McAvoy recounted. “I auditioned for it and I think they wanted to put me on a retainer. I’d hardly done any work and me and I think ten other actors, they wanted to put us in a retainer so that they could hold us and keep us to choose later.”

It “was a really strange thing,” he said of the process. “And they offered quite a lot of money. For me at that time, it was a ton of money. It was like £40,000 or something like that. I’d done very little work and I wouldn’t be able to do any work for about seven months, I think.”

After speaking with his agent, who told him: “Absolutely not. Don’t do that. We’re gonna go do something else,” he recalled he went on to do a play where he got “booed by a homophobic gentleman.”

“I did that instead and got paid I think £275 a week,” McAvoy shared, adding that he has no regrets.

“It was part of the making of me,” he said. “I was actually learning and doing all that.”

British actor Christian Coulson would go on to portray Tom Riddle in the quick flashback scene in the second movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).

Fiennes’s nephew, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, later played the younger version of Riddle in the sixth sequel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009).

James McAvoy said he was offered a ‘ton of money’ to play a major Harry Potter villain (Getty Images)

The eight-movie adaptation of author JK Rowling’s best-selling book series about the Boy Who Lived is currently in the process of being turned into a TV series for HBO.

On Monday, HBO launched an open casting call for a new trio of actors to play the next Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, with filming likely scheduled to begin in April 2025.

A decade-long TV adaptation was confirmed last year, with the aim of it being a “faithful adaptation of the beloved Harry Potter book series.”

The series is expected to release in 2026, featuring an entirely new cast from the film franchise, which originally starred Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as the leading trio.