license and registration, please

I am terribly confused. Just how old is James McAvoy? The Internet Movie Database says he was born 1 January 1979. That would make him 28.

But read this first sentence from an article by Ella Taylor in LA Weekly: "On January 1, one day after his 27th birthday and fresh from his honeymoon, James McAvoy slips into a coffee shop in the fashionably scruffy North London borough of Crouch End, where he’s bought a house with his bride, the actress Anne-Marie Duff."

This supposes he was born 31 December 1979. There is very nearly a year's difference here! Something tells me Taylor is right since, regarding his success so far, he is quoted as saying, "'Look at all the actors who were so successful at 27 and then disappeared.'" You wouldn't say that about yourself without indirectly referring to your own age (in this context), would you? Then again, he might just be referring to the success he's had up until that age because he's just barely 28. I don't know what to think anymore.

I apologize for nitpicking, but something like someone's birth-date always catches my attention. I have a (semi) photographic memory, and I am very good at remembering numbers, especially dates. But McAvoy's birth-date doesn't mean much in the long run, I know.

I will say this, though: If he was born 31 December 1979, it is too cool. He could have just spent hours--or even minutes--in the 1970s. Same goes for Val Kilmer; his experience in the 1950s is also limited to just hours or minutes. How do I know all this?

Oh, and I want to comment on the article's title: "Great Scot." This is the go-to headline for anything regarding a Scotsman. Ewan McGregor would get this kind of treatment in the American magazines, and I'm sure he still does somewhere.