'California Schemin': James McAvoy's Jump to the Director's Chair Came After Decades of Learning

James McAvoy can't point to a single director whose example he followed with his directorial debut "California Schemin'." Rather, it's been more than a quarter-century of watching various directors ply their craft that gave him the lessons he needed to try out filmmaking himself. "I quickly started to realize in my 20s, like it's not as easy as learning from people making mistakes," McAvoy told TheWrap at TIFF 2025. "That's not learning. Learning is when you look at people who are great and you can't even understand what they're doing." Among those great directors . . .