Speak No Evil among our 5 favorite creepy James McAvoy performances

Scottish star James McAvoy is currently earning rave reviews for his performance in the new film Speak No Evil. But longtime fans of the actor know that he's no stranger to tackling bold and interesting roles. From playing Charles Xavier in several X-Men films to Lord Asriel in His Dark Materials and Mr. Tumnus in Chronicles of Narnia, McAvoy has had a long and varied career.

You can always count on him being one of the strongest elements of any film that he's in. For now, we're focusing on praising some of our favorite creepier performances of him in honor of Speak No Evil now playing in theaters.

Paddy in Speak No Evil (2024)

The American remake of Speak No Evil by Blumhouse Productions has been a polarizing movie from the jump, whether due to overexposure (the endless trailers) or because fans of the original aren't thrilled by a remake of an already great film that was already filmed mostly in English.

But fans and critics agree that McAvoy is the standout in the 2024 film as the sinister primary antagonist Paddy.

Kevin Wendell in Split (2016)

When people think of James McAvoy and the word "creepy," I imagine most will jump to this 2016 M. Night Shyamalan where he played Kevin Wendell, a disturbed man with dissociative identity disorder who imprisons three teenage girls in an underground facility.

McAvoy did such a great job at playing all the various "personalities" in this film that he eventually reprised the role in the spinoff movie Glass, also set in Shyamalan's Unbreakable Universe. Among all of his personalities, the most feared is "The Beast," the most powerful of Kevin's forms who wants to rid the world of impurities and exhibits enhanced strength. It'll be interesting to see if McAvoy's Speak No Evil performance leaves as much of an impact as Split did.

William "Bill" Denbrough in It: Chapter 2 (2019)

Bill isn't a villain in this movie so it might be cheating, but McAvoy certainly delivered a fantastic performance as the adult Bill Denborough who is still very much haunted by the horrific death of his younger brother Georgie.

The second chapter follows up with the loser's club 27 years later as Pennywise returns to terrorize the town of Derry and Bill and his friends try to put an end to the eldritch creature for good. McAvoy gets some great scenes in this one like the nightmarish Hall of Mirrors sequence in the funhouse.

David Percival in Atomic Blonde (2017)

People might have forgotten about McAvoy's performance in this movie since the main attraction is star Charlize Theron, but he is perfectly sinister and suitably violent when needed as the MI6 agent David Percival. Percival is no stranger to murder and kills several people in the film, though most notably he orchestrates and violently murders Lorraine's lover Delphine Lasalle in one of Atomic Blonde's most chilling scenes.

Victor Frankenstein in Victor Frankenstein (2015)

While not the greatest of movies overall, Victor Frankenstein was an intriguing adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic novel with compelling performances from both of its lead actors, McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe. Victor himself isn't all that creepy, but the stuff he does throughout the movie is plenty terrifying as he creates horrific experiments in his lab, some of which are highly dangerous.

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