Actor James McAvoy has revealed he was booed on stage a number of times during a same-sex kissing scene, including by a “homophobic gentleman,” during a theater run more than 20 years ago.

Known best for his role as Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies, McAvoy opened up about the incident during an interview with Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast.

“I did a play called Out in the Open, and in the opening scene, myself and another Scottish actor had to make out as two men because they were in love with each other and I got booed a couple of times by a couple of older gentlemen, and then they walked out as well,” McAvoy said of his 2001 performance in the play. “And that happened more than once in that theater.”

Horowitz then asked the actor if the audience reacted to the men’s behavior and McAvoy said one of the men’s wife smacked him for booing.

“I remember the first person that did that his wife hit him and told him… to stop,” McAvoy recalled, and joked with Horowitz saying: “When is violence ever good? Maybe it can be in this the case.”

Newsweek contacted McAvoy’s representatives by email outside of office hours for comment.

The star also referred to the play when he spoke about being shortlisted to star in a Harry Potter movie as a young Tom Riddle, the character who would go on to become the main villain, Voldemort.

It “was a really strange thing,” he said of auditioning for the film and being told the studio wanted to keep him on retainer until it had decided whether to cast him. “They offered quite a lot of money, for me at that time, it was a ton of money. It was like £40,000 ($52,658) or something like that. I’d done very little work and I wouldn’t be able to do any work for about seven months, I think.”

But his agent told him, “absolutely not. Don’t do that. We’re gonna go do something else,” McAvoy explained, adding that he then did Out in the Open, where he got “booed by a homophobic gentleman.”

“I did that instead and got paid I think £275 a week,” McAvoy said.

“It was part of the making of me,” he said. “I was actually learning and doing all that.”

“I remember it was right at the beginning of my career. I auditioned for it and I think they wanted to put me on a retainer. I’d hardly done any work and me and I think 10 other actors, they wanted to put us in a retainer so that they could hold us and keep us to choose later.”