James McAvoy's 'rough' first meeting with Jennifer Aniston as he says 'it wasn't great'

Actor James McAvoy has recalled his "rough" first meeting with his celebrity crush Jennifer Aniston.

The Scottish star, 45, shared his awkward encounter with the Friends actress, 55, while at a party in Hollywood at the start of his career. He admitted to having a crush on Jennifer when he first moved to Los Angeles. James confessed: "I did meet her and it wasn’t great. Not because she’s not great."

The Split actor explained how he crossed paths with Jennifer in the early 1990s when he was "really young". While appearing on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, James revealed: "I met Lucy Liu. And Lucy Liu was really, really nice to me and she was like, 'Come meet my friends'."

He said Lucy, 55, led him to a small group of her pals that included Jennifer. James said: "I got parked right beside Jennifer Aniston. And just as [Lucy] 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'."

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The actor said he turned to Jennifer and awkwardly told her: "So you’re Jennifer Aniston and you’re in Friends." He confessed: "It was rough. But she was lovely." James went on to marry actress Anne-Marie Duff after they met on the set of Channel 4 show Shameless. They played on-screen love interests with Anne-Marie in the role of Fiona Gallagher and James as Steve McBride.

The pair tied the knot during a quiet and secret ceremony on November 11, 2006, and welcomed a son, Brendan, four years later. "We don’t talk about each other much and we don’t turn up together at lots of events. We both really rejoice in having a normal life," James told The Washington Post in 2007.

However, the couple stunned fans in 2016 when they announced their split. Even then, the pair remained respectful of each others privacy as James said in 2017: "Me and Anne-Marie, when we were together, it was our policy not to speak about each other in public. We rarely broke that and if we did, it was for tiny things — 'Yes, we are cooking turkey this Christmas' — and that policy still stands. Even separated, we're still respectful of each other and committed to doing that publicly and personally.

X Men actor James is now married to Lisa Liberati, having met on the movie set of Split in America which James had a starring role and Lisa was working as a director's production assistant. The actor took a significant step to downsize from his former 1.9 million London home to set up with Lisa in a cosy city apartment.

They moved to the modest apartment in July 2020 and ended up spending lockdown in their petite pad. James and Lisa had hinted that a move was on the cards when they were spotted strolling hand in hand and looking at London properties including a £3.5 million house in September 2020.

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