James McAvoy

Not since Ewan Mcgregor burst on the scene with his starring turn in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting have we seen an acting talent like this from the shores of Scotland. James McAvoy costars with Forrest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland about a Scottish doctor who becomes official physician to Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda in the 70s.

Well, perhaps I'm exagerrating. To be honest, I've never heard of James McAvoy until watching the trailer. The first thing that struck me was his accent. So, I figured, fine, I'll search for his name. And what do you know? He has a webpage devoted to him.

Although he's been in about a dozen films, showing that he has some level of popularity, is it enough to warrant a website? These days, actors of any level often get a website. You don't have to be all that famous to have one made for you. Few, if any, match Wil Wheaton's geekiness. I have to give him props for running his own website, something that is far beyond most actor's technical ability or desire.

It's tough to tell whether these sites are "official", i.e., made with the blessing of the actor, or made by a zealous fan who often works on it for six months to two years before abandoning it in a fit of short attention span, fad switching outburst. Usually, fan sites say clearly that they are a fan, because otherwise they are inundated with email of other fans wanting to build a special bond with the actor.

So I picked James McAvoy, but there are literally hundreds of other relatively unknown actors I could have picked that have their websites. Some are there for noble purposes. They use it as a public face for charities they support.

Sometimes I miss the early days of the web when everyone tried to create their garish, but simple, websites, maintained it for like six months, and then decided not to pay the money to keep it around longer than that. A website takes work, work that could otherwise be spent meeting people, going out to events, reading books, or getting plastered (or feeding the baby).

One day I hope more actors are like Wil Wheaton, who are able to run their own website. I see that happening in two ways. First, the websites become easier to run. Second, actors, and thus people in general, become more savvy about computers. Oh yes, and actors find that they like to maintain the website.

I've restricted this discussion to actors, but honestly, it could be anyone. Musicians, athletes, cooks, bus drivers, what have you.

We're leading increasingly public lives and the Internet is enabling that (oh, I hate to use that word).

So good luck Mr. McAvoy. We'll see if you have the cojones to be Ewan McGregor.