WHAT a year for acting's new king of Scotland. James McAvoy ended 2007 with a Golden Globe nomination for his stunning performance in Atonement, Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's second world war-set novel. The movie also had the honour of being the most nominated film in the Globes.

As ill-fated hero Robbie Turner, McAvoy dominated the screen, outshining the perfectly-composed beauty of Keira Knightley. Turner was also, in McAvoy's words, "beautiful. He's Jesus Christ, completely without flaw at the beginning of the book. I don't think I've ever met anybody as good as Robbie. And that's terrifying to play".

This is why Glaswegian McAvoy - still only 28 - is so good: he gets inside the characters he plays, burrows into the heart of the film. Atonement, he reflects, spoke to him: "I find it so easy to empathise with that story, because it's part of us, it's part of our history, it's part of Britain."

McAvoy doesn't undertake any job lightly. Take Becoming Jane, another of his 2007 films. On the surface, one more chocolate-box romantic period drama. But for his portrayal of Tom Lefroy, the roguish Irishman who breaks the heart of a young Jane Austen, McAvoy researched Anglo-Irish politics of the period. He duly challenged the film's producers' request that this Englishman of good stock have an Irish accent. "I was like, It's completely f***ing disrespectful to an Irishman to suggest the Irish overlords all had Irish accents. Just 'cause the producers know Americans like a bit of the Irish blarney'."

Equally, in The Last King Of Scotland, released in January, McAvoy knew exactly what he wanted to do. Scots director Kevin Macdonald has recalled that for all the "presence" of Forest Whitaker - whose performance as Idi Amin, earned him an Oscar - McAvoy was quietly but forcefully on top of his game in every scene.

This diligence, authority and confidence will see McAvoy right and stop him making bad, or just obvious, choices.

Even now that Hollywood is calling, he is playing it canny. The film he has recently wrapped may star Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, but it's a fantasy action film of a different stripe: Wanted is based on a comic book by Scotsman Mark Millar and while it contains stunts and aggro galore, it also posits questions about the role of heroes in society and the way the media spins lives.

McAvoy may be one of the best young actors in the world, but he is unlikely to be seduced by the heights. "When you've got a bigger part, it's your responsibility to fight for the integrity - it sounds wanky - of the art," he says. "The film industry is an industry that makes money out of art. But it has to have both."