Thte RANSFORMER
Over the past 20 years Ewan Mcgregor has evolved from young rebel hero to suave leading man. He talks to Damon Wise about fame, family and ageing on screen.
SIX MONTHS ago, Ewan McGregor strolled incognito down the Croisette at the tail end of the Cannes film festival. He was dressed in bright white, with a beard, shades and a widebrimmed hat pulled down to the eyebrows. In the hubbub of the Cote D’Azur’s garishly dressed, he somehow melted into the crowd. Intent, or accident? ‘‘I wasn’t in disguise,’’ he says, taking slight umbrage at the suggestion. ‘‘I’d just been given a really nice hat. So I thought I’d wear it. I think if you put a cap and a pair of shades on in an airport, of course everyone’s gonna look at you. But I’m not worried about it. I don’t feel like it’s a curse. If you’re gonna be on TV and film, and expect people to watch you, of course they’re gonna look at you in the street. What else would they do?’’
‘There was some talk that the film might be cursed.’
McGregor has been in the business nearly 20 years, and in that time he has segued smoothly from a rebel hero of new British cinema – epitomised by his turn as junkie pinup in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting – into a suave leading man, the latter cemented by his (surprise) Golden Globe nomination for Lasse Hallstrom’s fusty romantic drama Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Until 10 years ago, his penchant for fullfrontal nudity – The Pillow Book (1996), Velvet Goldmine (1998) and Young Adam (2003) – threatened to overshadow any genuine acting talent but, with his performance in The Impossible, he has put all that behind him.
The Impossible is the second film by Spanish director Juan Antonio ‘‘Jota’’ Bayona, who caused a stir with his first, The Orphanage. Where The Orphanage dealt with the mysteries of the supernatural, The Impossible deals with the miracles of the real, telling the story of a married couple (McGregor and Naomi Watts) who go on holiday to Thailand and get caught up in the horrors of the tsunami that hit the country on Boxing Day 2004. McGregor gives a wonderful, lowkey performance. One that truly serves the core, intimate drama of a film that, like Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, isn’t just an account of what happened but is also about the psychological aftermath. The trauma and the tragedy is replicated with incredible realism. A standing ovation greeted its premiere in Toronto, where we meet. Watts recently picked up a best actress Oscar nomination although the film – and McGregor – missed out in all other categories.
Even the mere script, says McGregor, was devastating. ‘‘What you got from it was the brutality and truth of the story, through the eyes of that family. In terms of scale, though, it’s all very well to read that your character is walking through a devastated area. But it’s not until you get on the set that you think, ‘ Oh my God’.’’
He says this because, although many of the special effects were reproduced for real – being cheaper than CGI – in a studio tank in Alicante, much of the shoot took place on location, on beaches still scarred by the tragedy. ‘‘It was a very difficult film to make,’’ he says, ‘‘especially with the weather. We had a lot of rain, and the actual day of the original tsunami was very beautiful, so we had to wait. There was some talk among the Thai crew that the film might be . . . [he pauses] cursed, you know? That the spirits or the gods might be preventing us from making the film.’’ He pauses again. ‘‘There were some spooky moments.’’
So spooky that the crew held a ritual to ‘‘appease’’ these spirits, sending lanterns up into the skies. As soon as they did so, the wind sent them flying in every possible direction. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t so much a warning as a reminder of the unimaginable chaos of that day. Says McGregor: ‘‘Jota has always said – and he’s right – that crying was a real privilege in that situation, because nobody had time. And so when people did cry, they totally fell apart.’’