Ewan McGregor
Ewan McGregor
Ewan Gordon McGregor, OBE is a Scottish actor. His first professional role was in 1993, when he won a leading role in the Channel 4 series Lipstick on Your Collar. He is best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting, the young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, poet Christian in the musical film Moulin Rouge!, and Dr. Alfred Jones in the romantic comedy-drama Salmon Fishing in the Yemen...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth31 March 1971
CityPerth, Scotland
I've done nudity in lots of things before. It's something that's never particularly bothered me.
When I was a kid I was much happier watching old movies than kids' TV, and I ended up watching all the old Ealing comedies.
This is purely an attempt to do some good theatre, commission new writing, adapt the classics and to do our own thing.
Sometimes I feel like doing smaller budget stuff. When I did 'Young Adam', for instance, I'd come out of 'Black Hawk Down' and 'The Island', and I really wanted to be on a small film set. I wanted to be on something intimate and small again, and then 'Young Adam' cropped up in a pile of scripts I was sent.
Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.
I think the script is the key. Regardless of how great everybody else is working on a film, if you're working on a script that you don't think is great, you're not gonna be able to make a great film. Whereas if the script is great, then you can.
I think it's quite tricky for actors to release albums. It's difficult, because I'm an actor, you know, I'm not a musician. I love singing, but I don't have a big repertoire of songs that I've written; I mean, I've got a few, but nothing that I could fill an album with, and I don't want to do it just for the sake of it.
There's something that happens where you go, if you're lucky, goodness me, from film to another film to another film. And you can sort of feel that if you step off that treadmill, it might all go horribly wrong and you might never be employed again, you know. And I suddenly thought that that's not necessarily the case. And I also thought we make drama as actors about people in the world and that if you are on that treadmill, you start making films about other films.
It is always a nice feeling when you are challenged by a scene and you walk out of trailer and you go on set going I don't know. And then half an hour later you're walking back.
I love music and I always seem to have a tune in my head.
A million pounds sounds like a lot of money now that I'm saying it. But in terms of moviemaking, it's not a lot of money. And yet you can see what can be done with that, with the talent of a great cinematographer and great director and actors.
I have worked with a lot of great directors but my favorites are all entirely different from one another. They don't go about it the same way.
I don't like being told that's where you, you know, if you walk on set and somebody was "okay, you're here and you're going to walk over there on this line." And my reaction is always how do you know? How do you know that's what I'm going to do? How do any of us know?
There's nothing worse than shooting a scene you haven't rehearsed.