It’s where everyone ended up on Saturday night. Especially the Brits. Oh and Zach Galifianakis. And that new Spiderman kid Andrew Garfield. He’s wonderful in Never Let Me Go but Laura, in real life, who is partial to Brits, wasn’t feeling his hair. His hair isn’t great. Having said that, it looked way better last night at the VMAs when he presented with Jesse Eisenberg and some other dude.

Gemma Arterton was there, so much littler in person than on screen, with the smallest nose you’ve ever seen, which is ironic I guess because in Tamara Drewe she plays a girl whose life changes after she cuts her big nose down. Tamara Drewe is a good movie. Laura and I saw it in Cannes and laughed our asses off. Especially at Dominic Cooper with his black eyeliner and tight pants and teenage stalkers.

Cooper while we’re at it was in fine form that night. He was rather cute over at the dj booth grooving to the beats. But then his hips started grooving at literally every lady in his vicinity. I don’t give a sh-t who you are. Chair grinding from behind is off limits. That move is an Ebola Hilton play.

But you don’t care about any of that. You care about James McAvoy. Laura has some major love for James McAvoy. One of the few shorties she can open her black heart to, because he really does have such gorgeous blue eyes and the accent and, well, he’s just so sweet.

We had covered his gala for The Conspirator earlier that evening and he was delightful and charming and talked about going to the Blue Jays game and about his 60s costume for X-Men, and was gracious and friendly and made Laura happy and so when we arrived at Soho House from the Vanity Fair party in the rain much later, seeing him there she immediately declared that it was worth it and we weren’t moving.

Fortuitously he came over with a friend who was smoking by the window close to where we were sitting. After the friend finished the cigarette they walked away, and I was just returning to our table from greeting someone else, and I had rested my drink on the ledge by the window when James started heading back over alone and there he was right beside me, so we started talking about “TIFFing”. He asked me if I was “TIFFing”, and there was a movie discussion and then he was interested in my white drink – a Grey Goose Hollywood North martini – and I challenged him to smell it and tell me the ingredients.

He leaned into the glass, took a deep breath, and correctly identified almond extract. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Laura having a seizure and considering taking up smoking just to have an excuse to be at that window.

There is no overstating how nice he is. So so SO nice. He was missing his wife and baby boy, he said it was excruciating being away, hard to go to work every day on X-Men even though they’re shooting in London, and wanted to show photos but he’d forgotten his charger in England and the iphone was out of juice. Balls! It was four hours though until his flight (we were 1am at that point) and he said he wasn’t sleeping. He wanted the first one out so he could rush home. And then it was time to refill my drink. I saw him leaving with an older woman about half an hour later, returning to his family.

Again, it’s not possible to exaggerate how truly, truly lovely he is. If you are a fan, your adoration is well directed.

As for The Conspirator, it didn’t really kick up much of a buzz. Not bad, not great, nothing really remarkable. And this year, considering the field, you really do have to be remarkable.



Photos from Alberto E. Rodriguez/Charley Gallay/Alexandra Wyman/Jason Merritt/Gettyimages.com