The Scottish actor went from making eyes at Keira Knightley to toting a semiautomatic pistol and making out with Angelina Jolie. Not a bad year.

-By Katherine Wheelock

Standing in the urban equivalent of a clearing in the woods, surrounded by squat stone buildings and haloed by an enormous Kmart sign, James McAvoy looks like an extra from a production of Oliver in need of a Grande latte. It doesn't help that he's wearing a newsboy cap pulled down over his ears. Or that it's one of those Dickensian days in New York when smoke-colored clouds spray a steady shower of cold rain over the city and a layer of wet leaves clings to the back of your legs. Out in this, McAvoy is a cliché of a Scotsman. "I love this weather!" he says happily.