James McAvoy revealed he had a ‘rough’ first meeting with Jennifer Aniston.
While appearing on Wednesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, the Scottish actor, 45, recalled an awkward encounter with the Golden Globe winner, 55, at a party in Hollywood at the start of his career.
‘I did meet her and it wasn’t great,’ he said of meeting his celebrity crush when he first moved to Los Angeles. ‘Not because she’s not great.’
The Split star explained they crossed paths when he was ‘really young’ in the early 1990s.
‘I met Lucy Liu. And Lucy Liu was really, really nice to me and she was like, “Come meet my friends,”‘ McAvoy remembered.
He went on to say Liu, 55, led him to a small group of her pals, which included Aniston, 55.
‘I got parked right beside Jennifer Aniston,’ McAvoy said. ‘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 with all these people going, “Hey, what’s up, I’m new in town.”‘
The actor proceeded to turn to Aniston and say: ‘So you’re Jennifer Aniston and you’re in Friends.’
‘It was rough. But she was lovely,’ he mused.
He has since gone on to tie the knot with actress and producer Lisa Liberati.
The couple began dating in 2018 after they met on the set of Split in America.
James had a leading role in the film while Lisa was a production assistant for the director M. Night Shyamalan.
McAvoy revealed he and Liberati secretly walked down the aisle in 2022.
Prior to their relationship, he was married to Anne-Marie Duff between 2006 to 2016.
Aniston became one of the most successful actresses in the world after launching into stardom on her hit series, Friends, which ran for 10 seasons.
Meanwhile, McAvoy kicked off his his screen career at age 16 in the 1995 thriller, The Near Room, before landing his breakout role in the miniseries, Children of Dune.
He is, now, best known for his roles in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Split, The Last King of Scotland and It Chapter Two.
Previously, Aniston’s Friends costars, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, both also admitted to having crushes on her.
Ahead of his tragic death in 2023, Perry revealed he was ‘immediately taken’ after their first meeting in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
