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For the first 20 years of his meteoric career, James McAvoy hardly stopped for breath. But as the final part of His Dark Materials comes to our screens, he tells Craig McLean it’s time to ease up

James McAvoy is waiting for a coffee (black and “posh”) and is talking about religious faith and his lack of it. In his childhood and early teens, the actor was a regular church-goer. He didn’t believe. “I think I just did it. And whenever I was in a pickle or a bind, suddenly faith came into it: ‘Please, God, I promise I’ll make my bed if you make this teeth-pulling thing not hurt!’”

McAvoy was born in Glasgow and raised by working-class, Catholic grandparents in the wake of his parents’ split, when he was seven. I ask if his grandparents were devout. “No,” McAvoy says. “In fact, my granda’ was a...

It has been a year since Hurricane Maria wiped out Puerto Rico. If you drop onto the island for a visit, the recovery looks almost complete. The San Juan airport is crowded, the cruise ships are docking on schedule, and the piña coladas are flowing in Old San Juan. The lights work and your cellphone gets pretty good reception. If you ignore a few dead traffic signals and bent road signs, you might even be able to fool yourself into thinking nothing ever happened.

But Puerto Rico has not recovered.