NEW YORK, NY—During a late night show appearance this week, award winning actor James McAvoy revealed that on no fewer than 5 separate occassions, he has been mistaken for some plumber who goes by the name of "Pete."
The Scottish actor, who has starred in major films such as Split, Dark Phoenix, and IT: Chapter Two, in the last few years, said that the first incident caught him by surprise when he stepped out of a limousine in Hollywood in 2006. "I just popped out to meet some people in the restaurant," McAvoy explained. "I didn't get recognized very much before then because I hadn't been in a lot of well-known roles. But The Last King of Scotland had released that year, so sometimes people would say something. It was kind of nice. But so this guy, he sees me get out of the limo and he stops and says, 'Hey, Pete! How've you been, mate?' I didn't know if he'd lost his mind or if I had."
The 40-year-old father of one said that the man was quite insistent that he was this "Pete" person, who apparently was last in Cleveland when the man and he had seen each other. Despite McAvoy's explanations of who he was, and that he'd never been to Ohio, the man continued to insist that McAvoy was Pete.
"He seemed so sure, I started to wonder if maybe I was Pete," he added.
The incident left him confused for some time, but he brushed it off as an anomaly. However, it happened again in 2010 when he was filming X-Men: First Class in England. This time, it was a teenage girl who stopped him as he was purchasing a bottle of water in a store. "Pete? Well I'll be! How're the kids? What're you doing in England?"
"She clearly thought I was this same guy. Well, by then I'd sort of forgotten about the first one, so now I was genuinely curious. I started asking her about Pete. He's a plumber, or was, and his name is Pete Harper. It seems that we are very similar in appearance."
McAvoy said that similar incidents have happened in Egypt and Las Vegas, and that the most recent was while he was at Comic Con this year. "I was actually sitting on a panel about His Dark Materials, and it came to the Q and A part. Some guy in a Storm Trooper costume gets to the mike, and says, 'This question is for Pete. Are you available to unclog a sink on Monday between 10 and 2?' The crazy thing is, by then, I was half believing that I was Pete, so I almost said yes."
McAvoy said that these incidents have caused him to lose sleep more and more. He's considered reaching out to find his mysterious doppelganger, but worries at what he may find. "What if he's like a super fan? Would that be creepier than if he'd never heard of me? Or like, what if he doesn't actually look anything like me? I mean, who would go to all of this trouble just to mess with me like this?"
The visibly agitated McAvoy then abruptly ended the interview and left the stage, muttering to himself and curling his hair with one finger obsessively.
Some wonder if this was perhaps some bizarre publicity stunt for some upcoming movie the actor is set to be in, and others wonder if he's imagined the entire thing. Others suggest that he may be living a double life, though he is unaware that he is both Pete and James simultaneously, much like an individual with Dissociative Identity Disorder, as he played in Split.
We found Pete Harper in the phone book, and reached him by phone. He said that he was indeed a plumber, that he'd never left Cleveland, and that he has never once been mistaken for an actor named James McAvoy.
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