James McAvoy, The Last Station

Amid the bustle of the Regency Hotel's luncheon area, a bearded James McAvoy has retreated to a corner booth where he's on a one day break from the Savannah filming of Robert Redford's The Conspirators--a post Civil War drama about the trial of Lincoln's killers--to visit Manhattan and talk about his role as Valentin Bulgakov in Michael Hoffman's The Last Station. McAvoy discusses the historical accuracy of Hoffman's recreation of the final days of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) and his battles with his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) over his copyrights, estate, legacy and--via his lapsed Russian Orthodox Catholicism--his soul (26 minutes).

•