James McAvoy Recalls Meeting Celebrity Crush Jennifer Aniston: “It Was Rough, But She Was Lovely”

James McAvoy recently opened up about his first time meeting his celebrity crush.

The Speak No Evil star stopped by Watch What Happens Live! earlier this week to promote his upcoming film, when he was asked who his celebrity crush was and if he ever met her.

McAvoy revealed it was Jennifer Aniston, and he met her years ago but noted “it wasn’t great” before quickly clarifying, “Not because she’s not great.”

“I was at a party when I was really young, I was like 22 in L.A., and I met Lucy Liu, and Lucy Liu was really, really nice to me, and she was like, ‘Come meet my friends,’” he recalled of his first encounter with The Morning Show star.

The Shazam! Fury of the Gods actress took him over to a circle of friends, one of which was Aniston.

“I got parked right beside Jennifer Aniston,” he said. “And just as [Liu] was like, ‘Hey, guys, meet my new friend James,’ instead of saying that, she got pulled aside by a guy she went to high school with. She went away, and I was just left standing with all these people going, ‘Hey, what’s up, I’m new in town.’”

Before he could stop himself, he blurted out: “So you’re Jennifer Aniston, and you’re in Friends,” which wasn’t ideal. “It was rough,” he added. “But she was lovely.”

In a separate interview on Happy Sad Confused, the Split actor also revealed that he was almost cast as Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter films. He auditioned for the role at the beginning of his career, he recalled, and the studio wanted to put him and 10 other actors on retainer to choose from one of them at a later date.

“It was a really strange thing,” the X-Men star told host Josh Horowitz. “And they offered quite a lot of money. For me, at that time, it was a ton of money. It was like 40 thousand pounds 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.”

While it was something he would’ve considered, he consulted with his agent, Ruth Young, who still represents him. She told him, “Absolutely not.” Instead, he ended up doing a play where he was “booed by a homophobic gentleman.”

“I did that instead and got paid I think 275 pounds a week,” McAvoy said, adding that he has no regrets. “It was part of the making of me. I was actually learning and doing all that.”