Ewan McGregor: junkie, dashing ladies' man, bisexual translator, horn playing miner, cynical journalist, now Obi Wan Kenobi. At 26 the hot Scottish actor has had a wide range of roles. He talks to Michael Dwyer about being a face for all seasons
THE force is with Ewan McGregor, the dynamic young Scottish actor who has been signed to play the young Obi Wan Kenobi in the new
Star Wars movie. At 26, the remarkably prolific and adventurous McGregor has already demonstrated a formidable range in a succession of recent movies as the cynical, long haired journalist in Shallow Grave, the shaven-headed prinicipal junkie in Trainspotting, a dashing ladies' man in Emma, a bisexual English translator in Hong Kong in The Pillow Book, and a horn playing miner facing redundancy in Brassed Off; And he has completed another four movies which will be seen here over the next nine months.
"I really like being an actor," he says, "which means that the most exciting part about it for me is that you get to learn about so many different things and that you get to play all sorts of different people. I would get terribly bored if I was playing the same kind of character all the time.
To describe Ewan McGregor as an in demand actor is an understatement. Not since Daniel Day Lewis and Gary Oldman has Britain produced such a versatile chameleon, and the hard working and utterly unassuming young Scot is relishing the experience. "I've been very lucky," he says, "always having something to go on to when I finish something else. And now I even have the opportunity to choose what I do. That's the best - it can't get better."
He was born in the small Scottish spa town of Crieff in Pertshire. He says he was interested in acting since he was "about nine" and was inspired by his uncle, Denis Lawson, a stage and film actor who had a leading role in Local Hero and, by coincidence, played the Wedge character in all three movies in the first Star Wars trilogy. "He always seemed very different to the other people I was surrounded by and at that age I wanted to be different like him," says McGregor. "So I decided to be an actor, and I wouldn't let anyone sway me.
He left school at 16 and worked in a Perthshire repertory theatre for six months, mostly helping out backstage although he did get a few cameo roles. Next stop was the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London where he studied for three years. Four months later he had landed his first professional role, in Dennis Potter's television series, Lipstick On Your Collar, and he has barely paused for breath in the intervening six years.
He was cast as Julian Sorel, the romantic lead in the BBC production based on Stendhal's The Scarlet And The Black and he made his film debut in Bill Forsyth's Being Human, in which he had a single line. From that brief appearance he made the leap into his first movie leading role when Danny Boyle selected him to play the cynical Edinburgh journalist, Alex, in the dark humoured thriller, Shallow Grave.
"I thought it would be an interesting film," says McGregor, "but it was only when I saw the first rough-cut and I realised what Danny had done with it that I thought, `God, did we really shoot this film?'. Danny's so clever and he's got a great eye." Much less notable was his next movie, Blue Juice, in which he was one of a number of actors cast in the unlikely roles of surfers in Cornwall.
From chilly Cornwall he went to an even colder studio in Luxembourg to co-star with Vivian Wu in Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book. In the film the uninhibited McGregor plays a bisexual English translator in Hong Kong where he meets Wu's character, a writer who uses his naked body for her calligraphy and sends her writing on his skin to her homosexual publisher.
"Being naked in those scenes was not a problem for me," says Ewan McGregor. "In fact, there was something incredibly powerful about it. Preparing for the calligraphy sequences was the problem. Every day I went into this cold studio at four in the morning and lay on a bed with heaters at each side. I laid on the bed for two hours while they painted my front, and I often fell asleep during it.
"Then I had to stand up for two hours while they painted my back, which became a bit tedious. But it was a beautiful film to make and I loved working with Peter Greenaway. He doesn't direct you very much and I enjoyed that freedom. He would set up these big wide shots and I had to act in them for about four minutes."
Following The Pillow Book, Ewan McGregor was reunited with the Shallow Grave team of director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald and screenwriter John Hodge for Trainspotting, in which he gave a dynamic, riveting performance in the central role of the skinhead junkie, Renton. "Ewan's a terrific actor, so energetic and so open, and he was our first choice for the role," says Danny Boyle. "We cast him on condition he shaved his head and lost two stone in weight."
The actor readily agreed. "That was just something that had to be done," he says. "Renton was living a life on heroin, so he wasn't going to be a beefcake. It wasn't a tough film to do at all. There was almost nothing difficult about it because I was so prepared for it. I had such a passion for it before we started and that stayed with me right through the shoot. It was a challenge, but that only added to it." The film went on to become one of the most profitable independent productions of recent years made for 3 million, it already has taken over. 20 times that amount at the international box office.
Busy as ever, Ewan McGregor had the luxury of a full month off in between finishing Trainspotting and, in sharp contrast, starting Douglas McGrath's film of Jane Austen's Emma, in which he plays Frank Churchill. "That was a mindbender, having such a short gap between two such different films, but I grew my hair, got fitted for the costumes in Emma and I got married." His wife is the French costume designer, Eve Maurakis, and they have a young daughter, Clara.
IS Ewan McGregor one of those actors who gets so immersed in a role that he finds it hard to move in and out of the diverse characters he plays? "No, I don't have to live a character," he says. "I think there's almost an element there sub consciously. For example, I think I was slightly more aggressive than I normally am when I was playing Renton.
`When I was playing Alex in Shallow Grave, I was quite rude to some people, though only to people who deserved it. When you're concentrating on certain aspects of someone else's personality, it brings your attention to those aspects in your own character."
For his American debut, Mr McGregor signed to play a student working the night shift at a city morgue in Nightwatch, a remake of a Danish thriller set at a time when a killer is on the loose in the city. The new version, like the original, was directed by Ole Borendal. "I wonder if he just directed the same film again, I don't know," says McGregor. "He's got a great director of photography, who's Danish and also worked on the first version. The sets were very good and it has a very good cast Nick Nolte, Patricia Arquette and Josh Brolin."
He returned to England, to film Mark Herman's Brassed Off in Doncaster. He plays Andy, a young coal miner who plays tenor horn in a miners' band which reaches the national finals as their coal mine is threatened with closure. "It's based on a true story and it's a really brilliantly political piece of film making," he says. "The politics are so strong and the music is so emotional." Playing tenor horn was not a problem for him as he had played French horn in his youth. "It was very similar, so I was able tootle along with the tunes, which was quite acceptable."
Ewan McGregor and his Brassed Off co-star, Pete Postlethwaite, came to Ireland last summer to star in The Serpent's Kiss, which was filmed in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare and set in Gloucestershire, England, in 1699. The film, which had its world premiere at Cannes last month, is a story of landscape gardening, sexual intrigue and deceit in which McGregor plays a Dutch gardener hired by a pompous, nouveau riche factory owner (Postlethwaite) to design and build a garden for his bored wife (Greta Scacchi).
"I'm passionate about this script," McGregor says. "It's one of the best I've read in a long time and it's beautifully written." The film is the first directed by the French cinematographer, Philippe Rousselot, who won an Oscar for A River Runs Through It. "Ewan is an incredible actor," Rousselot said on the set. "He looks great and he's perfect for the role. He was the first to be cast."
The film's producer, Robert Jones, whose credits include The Usual Suspects, concurs: "Ewan is a joy to work with. He's incredibly focused and a very genuine guy. This film was a long time getting going and he could have walked a hundred times, but he stuck with it despite very heavy pressures. Everybody wants to work with him.
Ewan McGregor was reunited again with the Shallow Grave and Trainspotting team of Boyle, Hodge and Macdonald for the offbeat romantic comedy, A Life Less Ordinary which was shot in and around Utah and will be released in the autumn. He plays a low paid Scot who dreams of writing the great American trash novel and who kidnaps the daughter (Cameron Diaz) of a powerful and ruthless businessman (Ian Holm).
"It's very different from the first two films we did together," says McGregor. "It's really exciting to work with them again. They're quite unique. They seem to have a vision and they seem to know exactly what they want to do. There's always a terrific atmosphere on the set with them, and Danny pushes you in different directions. He's got my full trust, which is very important and he never lets me down."
While in the US to shoot A Life Less Ordinary, McGregor contacted the producers of his favourite television show, ER, and offered to make himself available as a guest star, That episode, shown here recently on RTE and Channel 4, featured him as a Scot who sets out to rob a neighbourhood store with his American cousin. The botched robbery leads to them holding as hostages the store owners and customers, among them ER regular Nurse Hathaway played by Julianna Margulies. The claustrophic setting and McGregor's edgy performance heightened the tension of a truly compelling episode.
Most recently, Ewan McGregor has completed the Todd Haynes movie, Velvet Goldmine, which finished filming on location in London last month and is set in the early l970s, during the emergence of the glam rock scene. He plays an American singer who inspires and becomes involved with a young British glam rock star played by the fast rising Irish actor, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. The cast also features Toni Collette, Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard and Lindsay Kemp.
The next stop for McGregor is another galaxy, playing the young Obi Wan Kenobi in the first movie of George Lucas's proposed prequel trilogy to Star Wars which co-stars Liam Neeson. It is shrouded in secrecy.