James McAvoy doesn't mind if people describe his latest film, "Penelope," as a "chick flick."

"Penelope" is about a young woman (Christina Ricci) who is born with her blue-blooded family's curse -- the face of a pig -- which will last until she finds one of her own kind to love her. McAvoy plays Max, the one aristocratic suitor who genuinely likes Penelope but who still runs away from her.

"I think it's a good film simply because it's got a really good, positive message for young women -- for everybody, actually, but particularly young women," says the Scottish-born McAvoy, who starred with Keira Knightley in "Atonement," which took home the prize for Best Score and was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards last Sunday. "That message is in lots of things, but it doesn't seem to be a message that's particularly listened to or gettin' through, so it's important that we keep telling it.

"That message is: Be happy with yourself. Don't empower them (the media) anymore by making yourself feel bad because they say you look different or you look slightly strange.

"And not only has (the film) got an important message, it's also not communicating it in a patronizing way. As much as it's a whimsical, fairy-tale romance-comedy, your knight in shining armor is a gambling addict, and I think that's quite an unpatronizing adult tack to take with the kind of demographic that'll be going to see this film, which is girls and teenagers."

The "Becoming Jane" star is happy to hear that, at a recent screening of "Penelope," young female audience members cheered when his character kissed Penelope and shrieked with excitement when they saw his name in the credits.

"Excellent news," he says, speaking by phone from Los Angeles, where he was a presenter at the Oscars. Still, he doesn't expect to find the attention that has been growing since his portrayal of the faun Tumnus in 2005's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" to turn into a media frenzy in London, where he lives with his wife of 16 months, actress Anne-Marie Duff.

"We're very lucky," he says. "We don't get any of that, really. For some reason, we get left alone, which is nice. Hopefully that will continue."

McAvoy, who grew up in Glasgow, already had credits in film, television and theater by the time he graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2000. Among his earliest big breaks were roles in the 2001 miniseries "Band of Brothers," whose executive producers included Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, and the 2003 Sci Fi Channel miniseries "Children of Dune," in which he played Leto Atreides II. He stood out as Paul Bettany's brother in "Wimbledon," but first gained widespread recognition from moviegoers as Tumnus.

"Penelope," which also stars Reese Witherspoon, Catherine O'Hara and Peter Dinklage, was shot in London, although it's set in an unspecified city and mostly features American accents.

"It was one of those films where it was 90 percent British actors having to play American, which is kind of fun," says McAvoy, 28. "It looks like London, but then at times there's elements of a New York-y atmosphere to it. ... It doesn't really matter what we sound like."

McAvoy often has had to put on an English accent, but for Max he was asked to sound American. He's not fazed by accents.

"I don't think they're easy for me, but I don't think they're the hardest thing that I have to come up against when I act," he says. "It's not just something that I don't think about; I have to do a wee bit of work.

"If I'm doing an accent I've done before, then it's easier. If it's an English accent, it's probably easier than an American accent."

While "Narnia," "The Last King of Scotland," "Becoming Jane" and "Atonement" have raised McAvoy's profile -- he stars with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman in this summer's "Wanted" -- he gets a bit wistful at the mention of "Starter for 10," a British film that earned acclaim from U.S. critics but wasn't seen by many moviegoers.

"I love that film," says McAvoy. "I'm really, really proud of it although nobody saw that.

"It was a good -- I hate this word in the way it's used -- whimsical comedy, but it had some character to it."

And the film, set in the 1980s, had a "phenomenal soundtrack" featuring the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears, the Smiths and more.

"The story behind the soundtrack for that was that we couldn't afford such a great soundtrack because those tunes cost a lot of money," says McAvoy. "Morrissey doesn't really let his songs out for less than a ... lot of money, and neither do the Cure.

"But the lead singer for the Cure came along, saw the film, liked it so much and he was originally going to try and score some of the music, but it didn't work out due to other commitments, and he said, 'Yeah, you can have lots of our songs.'

"As soon as he did that, everybody from the '80s, including Morrissey, was like, 'Yeah, you can have our music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Have it cheap.' So it was great."