LONDON - James McAvoy says he would never play the lead role opposite his actress wife Anne-Marie Duff because he does not want their relationship to become a media “target”.

The couple, who fell for each other on the sets of popular sitcom Shameless in 2004, have since refuse to share the screen.

The due only agreed to star in the upcoming flick The Last Station, because their shots were filmed separately.

“We’ve been offered a hell of a lot of parts playing opposite each other in films and TV and we just turn them down. If you do work together you put yourself up, you make yourself a target and you make your relationship a target and all of that. We’re very keen not to do that. But in The Last Station we don’t play opposite each other hardly at all,” the Daily Star quoted McAvoy, as saying.

He added: “It was nice to spend those two months together rather than spending those two months apart, while she’s off somewhere doing God knows what and I’m off doing God knows what. So it was fine. It was quite easy with this one.” (ANI)