James McAvoy, who provides a voice in the recently released video game Twelve Minutes but is perhaps best known as this point for portraying the younger Professor Xavier in the X-Men movie franchise, seemingly fairly frequently plays video games like Call of Duty: Warzone with friends at this point, but there was apparently a period of roughly 10 years where he didn’t touch video games very much. According to a recent interview largely focused on the new video game, this is apparently thanks to a devastating binge with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion that concluded with him actually burning the disc on the stove to stop himself from playing it.
As part of a larger interview about Twelve Minutes with Forbes, McAvoy recalled his obsession with the video game back in 2007 while filming the movie Becoming Jane. “My partner at the time bought me an Xbox 360 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” he said. “That was a kind of game I’d always been into as a kid: role-playing games, Zelda, Secret of Mana, all that kind of stuff. Like, I love fantasy role-playing games.”
And that love apparently continued with Oblivion, leaving McAvoy going to bed late and getting up early. “And I’m just staying up until four in the morning just playing Oblivion,” he added. “And I was thinking, ‘This game is sending me to Oblivion.'”
Things apparently came to a head for McAvoy one night when he went to bed at 5:35 AM only to have his car blow its horn outside at 5:45 AM. “I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I need to do something,'” he said. “So I got up and I got the disc out of the Xbox 360 and I turned the gas hob on. I just put the disc on it and just watched it sort of, like, singe and melt a little bit. And I was like, ‘Right, we’re done, we’re over, never again!'”
Twelve Minutes or 12 Minutes, in which James McAvoy provides his voice to the main character alongside Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe, is currently available for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and the Windows Store. You can check out all of our previous coverage of James McAvoy right here.
What do you think of the fact that McAvoy actually burned his Oblivion disc to be rid of it? Have you ever become consumed in a video game like that? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!
[H/T PC Gamer]