the flying scot; Playing a Narnia faun or an eighties solipsist, James McAvoy steps effortlessly into character.

Byline: Jane Herman

It's this fantastic, fantastic, vibrant, just absolutely violent-beautiful place." In a charming Scottish accent, James McAvoy is talking about Uganda, where he spent two and half months filming Kevin Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland with Forest Whitaker and Gillian Anderson. Set in the seventies and based on the novel of the same title by Giles Foden, the film is a fictional retelling of the barbaric reign of Ugandan president Idi Amin.

McAvoy plays Nicholas Garrigan, a young physician, fresh out of school and full of hope and optimism, who ventures to Africa with the best intentions. Once hired by Amin, however, he cannot help becoming part of the problem. While The Last King of Scotland seeks to condemn, illuminate, and even humanize the tyrannical Amin on a political level, McAvoy's reading goes even deeper. "It's a love story," he says. "You know, sometimes we don't always fall in love with right people."

When it comes to acting, it seems the 27-year-old Scot can do no wrong. His credits include hits like the HBO series Band of Brothers and big-budget films such as The ...