James McAvoy, who plays the half-human, half-goat Mr. Tumnus in the upcoming fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, told SCI FI Wire that the character’s goat-like leg was realized with computer imagery, but he still needed to get around on set as if he had a human torso and a large, single goat leg. In the film, Mr. Tumnus befriends, betrays and then helps Lucy Pevensie (Georgie Henley), a young girl who’s stepped through a wardrobe into the mysterious land of Narnia.
“It was very easy once we figured out what that proper stance and walk would be, but the real challenge came in kind of finding that,” McAvoy (SCI FI’s Children of Dune) said in an interview. “[Director] Andrew [Adamson] always maintained that it should be a certain way, but when I got to New Zealand the special-effects guys had different ideas and wanted to explore it a bit more. So we spent two weeks in a motion-capture studio, fooling around, walking in stilettos and stepping around in [all] sorts of contraptions. I had baked-beans cans on my feet and sneakers with spring-loaded high-heeled things. None of it worked. But Andrew’s initial idea did, which was very simple: Stand on the tiptoes and bend your knees, and that’s what we did.”
McAvoy went on to note that he took some time to study goats and how they moved, but added that he didn’t obsess over that aspect of his performance. “I did that a little bit, but it was more important for me to find the heart and soul of the guy before I even began thinking about that stuff,” the British actor said. “That stuff could be subtle. The makeup did so much of that. For me to start twitching and kind of doing all of that rubbish, it would have been too much, I think.” The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is based on C.S. Lewis’ classic fantasy books, opens Dec. 9.