tf interview: ewan mcgregor
A candid career chat covering everything from Star Wars to Trainspotting 2, via 007.
Ewan McGreg or is hotter than ever. And there’s also the Trainspotting sequel. “The script is out the fucking park,”
he says.
When Total Film launched in 1997, Ewan McGregor was the hottest thing in British cinema, his electrifying turn as heroin addict Renton in Trainspotting injecting a staid industry with pure adrenalin. Since then, he’s of course conquered Hollywood, as everyone predicted he must, and has amassed 70-odd credits. OK, so they’ve been of wildly varying quality – his tag as a “promiscuous actor” refers not to the period of his career when he unleashed his penis at every opportunity, but rather to his sizeable quota of dodgy movies – but how many stars, Scottish or otherwise, have worked with Lucas, Burton, Luhrmann, Haynes, Polanski, Allen, Bay, Scott, Singer and Soderbergh?
“I still love what I do,” says the 45-year-old actor halfway through our hour-long chat. “I still get a thrill reading a script and going, ‘This is brilliant. I want to play this part’.”
Perhaps it’s this passion that keeps him looking so young. Total Film has met McGregor many times over his career, and though his appearance forever alters – long hair, short hair, suited, scruffy – his skin is always immaculate, his teeth dazzling and his charisma radioactive.
Today our talk is down a transatlantic phone line. It’s 10am in Los Angeles, McGregor’s home with wife, French production designer Eve Mavrakis, and their four daughters, and either he’s not a morning person or that aforementioned charisma doesn’t survive being bounced off a satellite to a wet and windy London. Not that he’s awkward: he’s polite and professional; but polite and professional doesn’t cut it when you’re used to the mile-a-minute anecdotes, the forceful swearing and the blinding grin.
But 10 minutes in, he begins to warm up. How could he not, discussing this slate: playing a university lecturer who becomes the middleman between a Russian mobster (Stellan Skarsgård) and British Intelligence (Damian Lewis) in John le Carré thriller Our Kind Of Traitor; making his directorial debut (and shouldering the lead) in an adaptation of Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a ruptured family and divided nation,
American Pastoral; portraying Lumiere in Disney’s live-action rendition of 1991 animation Beauty And
The Beast; and, most exciting of all, stepping back into Renton’s scuffed trainers for Danny Boyle’s long-awaited Trainspotting sequel based on Irvine Welsh’s book, Porno. All the main players are back to reprise their iconic characters – still partial to Class-A drugs but now dedicating much of their time to working in scuzzy skin flicks.
“The script is so good,” McGregor says, the pace of his speech quickening and the brio intensifying. “I have to say, I don’t think any of us would have been keen to make a sequel to
Trainspotting if it hadn’t been a stellar script. If you make a bad sequel to a movie, it damages the credibility of the movie that you made 20 years ago. But John Hodge, who wrote the original film, and Shallow Grave and A Life Less Ordinary – he’s just kicked it out the fucking park.”
For a lad born in Crieff to teacher parents who nonetheless encouraged him to leave school at 16 to join Perth Repertory Theatre, it’s been one hell of a journey. Time to look back on the highlights, and forward to what promises to be the richest period in his 23-year career since he chose cinema in the mid-’90s... How did Our Kind Of Traitor first blip on your radar? I loved the material. It was such a great story, like all of le Carré’s best novels. You play the role of Perry Makepeace in your own voice… I felt there wasn’t a need to adopt an English accent, or anything like that. It’s interesting because I’m always playing characters with accents. So for me to play something in my own voice is quite rare and quite exposing. Makepeace is not a professional spy. Was it interesting to play an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation?
Yeah. That was always the fascinating thing
Shallow grave was mass ively well-received. it stood for something different
I’m really happy with it. I’m still waiting to start work with Alexandre Desplat, who’s going to do the music for us.
How did you find directing and acting? I lived and breathed that story for almost a year before we started shooting, so I didn’t have to think much about playing the ‘Swede’; I knew him inside out. I found that directing from the middle of the scene was quite a good place to do it from. I made sure I always rehearsed with the actors alone. I just cleared the set. We would always rehearse and block each scene on our own. Because there was no director [ laughs]… Because
I was the director, and also the ‘Swede’, it became very inclusive. We put these scenes together ourselves in an empowering way. The last thing that we actors like is to be told what to do – “You’re over here.” You’ve done all genres, all sizes. How do you select your projects?
I would never do a film I didn’t like because it was being directed by someone great. But at the same time, you want to be working with great directors. But I continue to work with first-timers. I’m still happy to take that plunge with somebody. It’s quite exciting being with someone who’s directing for the first time, especially now that I know how they feel. [ Laughs] I’ll be more sympathetic in future.
Do you ever do films for the cash? It’s always the script first. Even the big ones that people assume you’re doing for the cash… if the script doesn’t grab me in some way, if I don’t think there’s something to do with the character, I wouldn’t do them. It’s too personal. You have to put something of yourself in everything that you do. Even Jack The Giant Killer – the character appealed to me. I thought he was funny. A blustery Errol Flynn character. I’d never done that before. I thought, ‘I think I’ve got him in me.’ And then, of course, if Woody Allen [Cassandra’s Dream] gets on the phone, or Roman Polanski [The Ghost] gets on the phone, there’s an added layer of, ‘Well, fuck! Wouldn’t it be amazing to work with them?’ Are there any films on your CV that you feel didn’t get the love they deserved? Velvet
Goldmine, perhaps? Ah, yes. There are lots of films that don’t get the audience that you would hope. But the funny thing is, they end up having a special place in your heart, and in the people-who-like-themovie’s hearts. Velvet Goldmine is one of the films that I get real die-hard fans always going on about. I see it on Instagram. I’ve seen tattoos of it. There’s something very special about it. And there’s another film: Stay, with Ryan Gosling and Naomi Watts. That film wasn’t seen by anybody. It’s an interesting, experimental, odd movie. I thought it was cool. But that’s it. I want my films to be seen and liked and touch people, but I don’t look at box-office figures. That’s more a producer’s game than mine.
Moulin Rouge! is a movie that many took to their hearts. You’ve just shot another musical, Beauty
And The Beast. Was that fun? Well, you know, my actual physical presence in that movie is very limited because we only appear at the very end. We’re animated characters through most of the movie. So we recorded all the dialogue. But I enjoyed it. It was nice working with Bill [ Condon, director] and Sir Ian McKellen and Emma Thompson. We had a great time on set. It was fun. The four days that we were there were a real party.
And we’ll again hear you belting out a tune… Yeah. ‘Be Our Guest’ – that’s a big number. I enjoyed it. Finally, we have to touch on Bond. Your name has been mentioned. Did playing the spy game in Our
Kind Of Traitor pique your interest? Yeah. I would absolutely be interested. It would be kind of cool to be Bond [ laughs]. But it’s not really on my radar. If it crops up, it crops up. But I don’t know if I’ve missed my moment. I might be too… I don’t like to use the word, but I might be too old for it now. You were at drama school with Daniel Craig. Have you not given him a nudge? Daniel Craig was the year above me. Damian Lewis was the year below me. Daniel’s done a great job with Bond. I’m not sure [ what will
happen]. They might be doing something very different with it. They might make him younger. Who knows? The phone hasn’t rung yet, so we’ll see. TF
Our Kind Of Traitor opens on 13 May. Beauty And The Beast opens on 17 March 2017. Porno and
American Pastoral open TBC.