James McAvoy says Joaquin Phoenix has given up the role of the ‘divided’ character

Years before Joaquin Phoenix hanged Todd Haynes, he dropped out of another great director's film just days before the end of his career.

James McAvoy recently reported on his “last-minute” preparations for the lead role in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 thriller Share after the Oscar-winning actor dropped out of production two weeks before filming began in Philadelphia.

“I am confident enough that I will do better. That was a joke!” McAvoy said on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast. “He's a great actor. I think his performance would be very different from what I did, but I think he would give an incredible performance.”

He added: “Sometimes it's best to get in at the last minute. I think he cancelled it two weeks before filming started. It was really last minute. I had two weeks.”

McAvoy plays the lead role in Share as Kevin, a man who lives with more than 20 personalities, one of whom orchestrates the kidnapping of three teenage girls (portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula). He reprised the role in the 2019 sequel Glasswhich was also the conclusion of the trilogy that began in 2000 with Unbreakable.

“The script was well thought out, so a lot of what I wanted to do was clear right away,” he explained. “There were a few characters I had to find later. Patricia came very quickly, Dennis came very quickly. Hedwig took a while. It wasn't until the read-through for the proof, which I was really nervous about, that it became clear.”

“I'm sitting there thinking, 'God, I have to play all 15 of these characters and be judged by everyone in the room, including the executives at Universal Studios, including Jason Blum, and I haven't even found some of the characters yet.' It just came really quickly,” McAvoy added.

The revelation comes after Phoenix reportedly stormed off the set of Haynes' gay romance in July as filming was set to begin in Guadalajara, Mexico. Production on the movie, which was set to star Danny Ramirez, has been halted.

McAvoy also recalled that he was out of the running for a Harry Potter role early in his career because the seven-month audition process would have kept him from working during that time.

“I auditioned for it and I think they wanted to give me a fee,” he explained. “I had barely worked and I and I think ten other actors wanted to put them on a fee so they could hold on to us and keep us to choose from later.”

The actor commented on the “really strange” process: “And they offered quite a lot of money. For me at the time, that was a lot of money. It was about £40,000 or something. I had worked very little and I think I couldn't work for about seven months.”

After his agent advised him against it, McAvoy turned down the fee and accepted a role that paid him £275 a week, but he has no regrets. “It was part of my development. I actually learned and did all that,” McAvoy said.