Ewan: How I won battle with booze
Trainspotting star tells of therapy
WHEN Trainspotting hit the screens two decades ago it shocked the world with its grim portrayal of heroin addiction and made a star out of Ewan McGregor.
But the film’s success was to lead the Scottish actor into his own very personal struggle with alcohol addiction which, he has now admitted, left him needing professional help.
In an interview for today’s Times Magazine, he said the film’s runaway success gave him a taste for the A-list lifestyle, including heavy drinking.
Now aged 45, he said when he realised the drinking was starting to take control of his life he decided to stop.
He said: ‘It’s not an easy thing to do, especially since here the culture is so wrapped up in alcohol and drinking – but it was just one too many things in my life.
‘I was an actor, I was a husband, a father, and I was a drinker. And the one I was willing to let go was the drinking.
‘So I did just that and it made everything else much easier. My life is much better for it. I don’t miss it.’
McGregor has previously refused to be drawn on whether he had ever sought expert help for his drink problems, describing it as a ‘private matter’.
But now, he has admitted for the first time that he did attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. ‘I did for a time,’ he said.
‘I mean, I didn’t go straight into AA. And I had a therapist, a sort of alcoholic specialist whom I spoke to for a while and that helped me give up. And now I don’t do anything. I don’t drink at all. That’s it. It’s a nicer life.’
The interview comes as filming gets underway for the sequel to Irvine Welsh’s cult classic exploring the squalid lives of a group of addicts in Edinburgh. The follow-up will reunite all four leading actors, who shot to global fame on the back of the original.
Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle revealed that he had persuaded McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle and Ewen Bremner to reprise their gritty drugaddicted characters, Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and Spud.
Last year, McGregor, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, indicated the long-awaited followup was now likely, admitting he was ‘up for it’ after mending fences with Boyle following a long-term feud.
The pair fell out after the director was reportedly set to cast McGregor in his 2000 blockbuster The Beach, but ended up handing the role to Leonardo DiCaprio.
John Hodge, who earned an Oscar nomination for the Trainspotting screenplay, has scripted the second film, which Boyle called ‘terrific’.
It was adapted from the 2002 novel Porno by Welsh. In his sequel, Sick Boy enlists Renton’s help to make a porn film, just as Begbie is freed from jail.
‘My life is much better’