EWAN MCGREGOR’S LIFE IN HORROR

The actor, 48, stars in Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining – and reveals his twisted relationship with film scare-fests

Halloween (1978)

Ewan McGregor is not a huge fan of watching horror movies – the Scottish actor was traumatised as a teenager when his pipe band visited Holland and watched John Carpenter’s original Halloween. “I don’t know what they were doing,” says the actor of the band’s hosts. “F--king sadists! I just realised that horror films weren’t for me.”

The Shining (1980)

In Doctor Sleep, McGregor portrays the grown-up version of Danny Torrance from Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan painstakingly re-created Kubrick’s version of the Overlook Hotel, even down to the booze behind the bar. “Every bottle was the right bottle,” says McGregor. “There were moments when the camera crew would be down there in the corridor, and I’m standing alone, and I’m literally in The Shining.”

Nightwatch (1997)

McGregor recalls this film about a hospital morgue security guard with a shudder, thanks to the interference of nowdisgraced executive producer Harvey Weinstein. “He ruined that film,” says McGregor. “That was a remake of a Danish movie with all these interesting elements to it. Weinstein made us reshoot everything – everything that was interesting about that film, he replaced.”

Doctor Sleep (2019)

In Doctor Sleep (out now), McGregor may be playing the son of Jack Nicholson’s haunted writer Jack Torrance, but he didn’t want to mimic the three-time Oscar winner’s performance. “I spent a lot of effort just trying to imagine what it might be like to sound like your dad, if your dad was Jack Nicholson,” says the actor, laughing. “But I didn’t want to do an impersonation of him.”