James McAvoy Recalls 'Rough' First Meeting with Celebrity Crush Jennifer Aniston: 'It Wasn't Great'

McAvoy just shared a vulnerable story from his early days in Hollywood.

By Michael Hein

Celebrities are not immune to "celebrity crushes," and according to James McAvoy, they're not immune to embarrassment either. The actor just described his first-ever meeting with his own celebrity crush Jennifer Aniston back in the early-2000s, and he still cringes at the memory today. He shared the story on Wednesday's episode of Watch What Happens Live when host Andy Cohen asked him about his first celeb crush.

McAvoy said that he crushed on Aniston as a teen when Friends was on the air, and that carried on in his early 20s when his own acting career took off. He said: "I did meet her and it wasn't great. Not because she's not great! I was at a party when I was really young, I was like 22 in L.A., and I met Lucy Liu. And Lucy Liu was really, really nice to me and she was like 'Come meet my friends."

McAvoy said that Liu led him to a circle at the party where several stars were chatting, and he was starstruck. He said: "I got parked right beside Jennifer Aniston. And just as [Liu] 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 there with all these people going, 'Hey, what's up, I'm new in town.'"

McAvoy said he really regrets his next words, which he directed unceremoniously at Aniston. He said: "So, you're Jennifer Aniston and you're in Friends." He felt he brought the conversation to an awkward halt, laughing: "It was rough. But she was lovely."

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McAvoy was born in 1979, so this incident likely took place in the first few years of the millennium while Friends was still on the air. McAvoy actually made his acting debut in the 1995 film The Near Room when he was 15 years old, then did some sporadic work on TV shows over the next few years until he finished school and began pursuing a career in earnest. His success in the U.S. really picked up in 2005 thanks to his role in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but he had been working in L.A. before that as well.

McAvoy is currently promoting his new movie Speak No Evil – a horror drama where he plays the host of a country vacation that turns creepy and violent. The movie hit theaters on Friday, Sept. 13 and is showing now around the U.S.

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