James McAvoy explains how art helps expand your horizons and why it should be accessible to everyone

James McAvoy has strong opinions when it comes to the dominance of privately educated actors and he had predicted a few years ago that it would be "damaging for society." McAvoy has been addressing this issue for years. In an interview with Stephen Colbert in 2016, he said that he doesn’t have any problem with posh actors becoming actors but it raises another big issue. McAvoy said, “It is a symptom of something wrong in our education system which is basically the government isn’t allowing the state peoples, people that go to normal school not expensive school to have access to art and educational art.”

He thinks that it is not about being an actor but about educating children in art. McAvoy said, “Because this is the one thing I think it increases the chance of social mobility and stops you just from sticking where you are. And I truly believe if you want your kids to have better life than you have got, I really think the only way to do it is to expose them to art it makes them see beyond their limitations and see new horizons even if they can’t physically leave.”

He added, “And I think it is a system of control to keep people where they are, to cut funding of arts in education specifically.” McAvoy’s views on the class ceiling recently went viral on Twitter recently with more than 1 million views. It is captioned, “if they wanna talk about nepo babies, bring my man to the table as one of the panel because he has talked about it for more than a decade in many many interviews even tho he is friends with dozen of nepo babies and posh actors. im sure he has a lot to say.”

People on the internet appreciated the actor for speaking out about such issues. A user wrote, “Also James and John Boyega are one of the few actors that didn't go to super expensive acting schools yet are successful with no nepotism or special contacts in the industry to make it, they basically started from the bottom. Proof that what matters is talent not privileges.” Another said, “This is why conversations about nepotism taking up space are important not just in politics." Another user said, “yes, he was spot on in this interview, always speaks a lot of sense.”

McAvoy studied at a drama school by working in a bakery. According to The Hollywood Reporter, private schools like Eton and Harrow are a few of the oldest private schools in the UK and has been churning out stellar acting talent in the recent few years. However, McAvoy's concern was more to do with people from other walks of life unable to get these opportunities to work in the arts. He said, “That’s a frightening world to live in because as soon as you get one tiny pocket of society creating all the arts, or culture starts to become representative not of everybody but of one tiny part, and that’s not fair to begin with, but it’s also damaging for society.”