The very first non-human role cast was that of Mr. Tumnus, the shy, retiring, half-man half-goat who befriends Lucy but is forced to serve the evil plans of the White Witch. The faun was C.S. Lewis' original inspiration for the creation of Narnia. He once said that it "all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood" so the filmmakers knew the part was vital to bringing Narnia to life. They found the fabled qualities they were seeking in rising Scottish actor James McAvoy. "James captured the sinister duality of Mr. Tumnus," says Andrew Adamson. "He also has the perfect face for the role. Most of all, he had this incredible connection with Georgie, which was so important to the story."
"I loved the books when I was a child, and to remember how they made me feel back then was exciting," McAvoy relates. "Mr. Tumnus was always one of my favorite characters, so to play him was a big honor." For McAvoy, the fascinating part of Tumnus is that he becomes morally torn in his mission to kidnap Lucy for the White Witch. "He is forced by circumstance to do something against his will," says McAvoy. "And therein lies the duality that Andrew and I talked about. Tumnus is conflicted because in the process of kidnapping Lucy, he forms a bond with her and they become close friends. Ultimately, he is forced to look at who he is, and what he wants and what he can live with, which is a very unexpected thing for him."
In addition to enduring the grueling grind of his daily makeup, McAvoy spent several weeks perfecting the voice and walk he used to bring the film's first Narnian creature to life. "In folklore, fauns were followers of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and intoxication. They were merry, mischievous creatures and I wanted to reflect that," McAvoy explains. "There's also a very English feel to the way Tumnus is written. That's something C.S. Lewis did on purpose, undeniably wrote him in a very certain type of English voice. I took the tone of Mr. Tumnus' voice from the goat in him, but the accent came from the man half of him."
From the waist down, Tumnus is all CGI, but in order to best emulate how a man-goat might walk, McAvoy learned to walk on his toes for the cameras. "They couldn't have me walking around as a normal guy because my upper body would look strange on these hind goat legs," he remarks. "So, I had to walk about a million different ways, then look back on the computer and see which one method worked!"
Even with all the preparation needed to bring Tumnus to life, director Adamson insisted that, like a bride before her wedding, actress Georgie Henley should not get a glimpse of what the faun character looked like until the last possible minute, so her reactions of wonder and delight would be entirely authentic. "Andrew always wanted to amaze me so he kept me from seeing the faun and the White Witch so that I would react in a very convincing way," says Henley, "and it worked!"
James McAvoy is well known in America for his role of Leto II in the Sci-Fi Channel series Children of Dune, based on the books by Frank Herbert. In his native Britain, the young Scot garnered critical acclaim for his work on the BBC-1 political thriller State of Play and the BBC-2 presentation of Early Doors. Before that, McAvoy starred in White Teeth for Britain's Channel Four, where he was also recently seen in Shameless. Last year, he completed a leading role in Stephen Frys new film, Bright Young Things, with Peter O'Toole and Stockard Channing. He co-starred opposite Kirsten Dunst, Paul Bettany and Sam Neill in the romantic comedy Wimbledon and played muscular-dystrophy victim Rory O'Shea in Rory O'Shea Was Here.