James McAvoy on Playing Professor X Like Patrick Stewart

When James McAvoy was cast as Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class, a lot of fans wondered if he would try to mimic Patrick Stewart in his approach of the character. I'm glad that he didn't, I like the way he portrayed Professor X; he gave the character his own spin. In a recent interview with Huffington Post, however, the actor said that he might start to channel Stewart's Professor X by the time he makes his third X-Men movie. Here's what he had to say when asked about his take on the character:

There's a little element in the script in the first couple of pages of Charles' character where he seems like he's sort of picking up a girl in a bar. And I thought, Let's take that and run with it. I kind of pushed and pushed -- to really try to take him as far away from the Professor X that we've seen before in the comics and the cartoon and as portrayed by Patrick in the movies as well -- he's kind of like a monk. He's a sage. And he's wise and he's very in control of himself and sort of selfless. I wanted to take him the opposite way -- without making him a bad guy. But, make him selfish and a little bit egotistical and all of those things. I think that helped -- the fact I wasn't actually trying to do Patrick Stewart in the body of a 30-year-old man. I think if I would have done that, people would have rejected me.

When asked about shifting his portrayal of the character to more in the realm of Stewart he replied with...

No. Not yet. I think that may come. I mean, who knows? Who knows where it's going to go? That may come in the third movie but definitely not in this movie. We're not in the same place that we were in the first movie with Charles -- a very different place from there. But we're also still on a very different place from where Patrick was in the other movies.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is going to be very interesting because these two versions of the same character will both be featured together. I'm sure whatever McAvoy ends up doing with the character will work out just fine.