GQ: Ewan McGregor on his fashion sense, cheating death and meeting Debbie Harry
In a suite at London’s Claridge’s Hotel, Ewan McGregor is pulling a face of utter bewilderment as he ponders the relentless march of CGI. The man who once had to battle to keep a straight face while conversing with Jar Jar Binks gestures towards the poster for his rather more sedate new film Salmon Fishing In The Yemen. “I mean, what I don’t understand,” he sighs, “is why on earth they’ve decided to turn my trousers blue.” Back from filming the Lasse Hallström-directed rom-com on location in Morocco and Scotland, here he shares the acting advice he was given by the screenwriter Dennis Potter, his sartorial lessons from Neil Barrett and what cheating death on a motorbike taught him.
I’m currently unable to embed the clip, but you can watch it at the site here.
“The Graham Norton Show” (Apr 13) Clips & Screen Captures
Last night, Ewan was a guest on The Graham Norton Show alongside Cate Blanchett and Michael Sheen, and gave a great interview as ever, discussing his look in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Sid, and showing off his fly-fishing skills. Screen captures are on the way but I’m guessing some of you would rather watch the interview itself first The whole show has been split into four parts, and are viewable in the Video Archive – enjoy!
In The Times today, UK visitors can find a great new interview and photoshoot that Ewan did recently as part of his promotion for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. I have managed to wrestle my scanner into submission, though I apologize for the poor quality, but my scanner is very old and The Times is a very awkward size! It’s a great interview though – I especially like the ‘Goth pixie’ description If you do reblog these anywhere else, please make sure to link back to ewan-mcgregor.org – and enjoy!
Ewan McGregor on Perfect Sense, Eating Soap, and ‘Messy’ Sex
Which of our senses do we most take for granted? In the film Perfect Sense, a mysterious plague shuts down humanity’s senses one by one, each preceded by an extreme emotion: a profound grief leaves victims with no sense of smell, feeding frenzies precede a loss of taste, fits of rage mean deafness will follow. Ewan McGregor, playing a chef, and Eva Green, as an epidemiologist, meet in the midst of all this and fall in love, even as they themselves lose their ability to smell, taste, hear, or — inevitably — see each other. Fortunately, McGregor has not lost his ability to chat, so Vulture checked in with him about eating soap, taking on his first TV role, and “messy” sex.
Did you spend time with any chefs to prep for your part in Perfect Sense?
I worked with an old friend of mine, Guy Cowans. He has a place called Guy’s in Glasgow, and he’s also a movie-set caterer in Britain. He became the chef advisor for the movie, for all of the sequences in the kitchen. So I worked with him for about a week, observing, about two or three hours a night, and I actually ended up helping out. I spent a few nights doing service, when it got really chaotic. [Laughs.] I used to be a dishwasher and a waiter when I was 14, 15, 16, so I do have some experience with that, but it’s fascinating to watch them keep the orders straight — what steak to cook for how long and all of that. It’s really quite something to see. So I was taught how to make several dishes that we incorporated into the scenes. Guy orchestrated most of it; we wanted it to be realistic, for our movements to make sense, so it looked like we knew what we were doing.
A career break has left workaholic Ewan McGregor feeling refreshed after nearly 50 films in 20 years. He tells Lucy Broadbent about life in LA, his tear-jerking new movie and why he wants to be remembered for more than his nude scenes
A dirty old man’s laugh honks down the hotel corridor, as if someone has just told a rude joke. That someone is Ewan McGregor, who now opens the door of his suite. “Come in, come in,” he says, his eyes still creased into laughter lines. “We were just … ” He never says quite what they were “just … “, but good humour hangs in the air like a party streamer. McGregor offers a handshake which percolates with the enthusiasm.
Dressed in a black T-shirt that sits tight on his lean frame, jeans cuffed at the ankle and black bovver boots, which he slams on the coffee table in front of him, he really doesn’t look that far removed from Renton, the character from Trainspotting that made him famous more than 16 years ago. Not that he looks like a heroin addict. But the clothes, the boots on the table, the pasty skin — the only difference might be a good haircut. Even at 40 years old, he doesn’t seem to have aged at all. Los Angeles, which is where we are now and where he is living, appears to agree with him.
Hello everyone! I’ve been away for the weekend, which is why these updates are a little late. On January 19, Ewan made not one but three appearances! During the day he was at SiriusXM Studios to talk about Haywire, and then in the evening he attended the NYLON Guys January Issue Party (for which he was the cover star) and he also appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon! Pictures from all three events have been added to the gallery, and stay tuned for clips and captures from Jimmy Fallon. Enjoy!
Ewan McGregor is beaming behind the wheel of his rusty 1960-something Volkswagen pickup in the parking lot of The Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. A left and then a fewblocks and then one more left on South Main Street, and he’s at yet another parking lot, this one deserted for the day’s shoot. Still sporting the tailored navy suit and brown tie from the last few frames shot in the hotel, he’s quickly out of the battered VW and ogling one of the day’s props, the photographer’s midnight blue 1964 Mustang, the one with the tiny little side-view mirrors that look like they belong on a dentist’s tray, and the missing “D” on the hood that renders its make “FOR.”
McGregor’s fondness for motor sports is well documented. A known gearhead, he has twice in the last decade embarked on cross-continental motorcycle trips — one around the northern hemisphere and one down the length of Africa. Both were broadcast as miniseries. On this day, he has his vintage Spanish test bike, another of the shoot’s props, lashed down in the bed of the pickup. He is still grinning when he takes the bike down the ramp, and later when a neighbor leans out a window to complain about its apparent lack of a muffler.
A day earlier, in the Spanish-style back patio of a Santa Monica cafe, no muscle cars or motorcycles or other toys in sight, that McGregor smile, the one he deploys with a glance to the middle distance when he makes sort of Zen pronouncements about his life or career, is on frequent display. Somewhere between content and amused, it is what a screenwriter might call a “knowing smile.”
Ewan McGregor plays a shady character in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, which is out next Friday on Jan. 20. He stars in the picture alongside MMA-fighter-turned-actress Gina Carano and happily got to exchange some jabs with her. His next movie out, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, pairs him with Emily Blunt. The latter film was a fun one for Ewan to make, and he said Emily made him “laugh like a drain.”
Spend time chatting with successful actors and you’ll hear all manner of serious talk about how hard it was to commit to a certain role and the deep, dark places plumbed in service of nailing it. Ewan McGregor, 40, is not like that. He likes to work, he works a lot and he finds satisfaction in the many roles he’s landed over the years, if not loads of personal drama. Currently, he has five movies in play: Perfect Sense, The Impossible, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Jack the Giant Killer and Haywire.
In Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, out this month, McGregor portrays a private military contractor of execrable moral fiber who betrays one of his chief assets — a gorgeous assassin played by Gina Carano — triggering an epic confrontation. But while several of the films McGregor has made lately concern skullduggery and calamity, he’s not feeling particularly dour himself. He’s a happy guy, living in L.A. with his family and maintaining a stable of the kinds of classic motorcycles you work on as often as you ride.
Born in Crieff, Scotland, McGregor dropped out of high school at 16 and enrolled at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After some dues-paying, he broke through in 1996?s Trainspotting; since then he’s convincingly portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, a love-struck poet in Moulin Rouge and the loyal if conflicted son of a man who came out late in life in Beginners — in addition to 40-odd other roles over 20 years.
McGregor has a reputation as a low-maintenance actor, a working man among divas. We talked about Haywire, his taste in motorcycles, his unfortunate inability to fake a punch and how, um, “fate” changed his life.
With four films slated in 2012, it’s looking like the Year of Ewan. We chatted with impossibly likable star of Haywire about fatherhood, fantasies, and the next twelve months
There’s no good reason to dislike Ewan McGregor, so here’s a really petty one: He’s one of those annoyingly unflappable guys who can stuff their life to the brim and carry it off like it’s a fleck of dust on their shoulder. He works constantly. Always has. In the sixteen years since he made his toilet-spelunking splash as a raffish junkie in Trainspotting, McGregor has been in thirty-eight films. He’ll star in three during the first six months of 2012, and there’s a fourth—a 3-D version of The Phantom Menace—that he claims not to have known about. “They’re actually going to rerelease it into the cinema?” he asks. “Well, that’s interesting.”
Add to that work schedule a packed personal life: The 40-year- old Scotsman is the father of four girls, and he seems genuinely taken aback by the suggestion that it could ever get overwhelming. “I never feel battered by it,” he says. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The battering he saves for on-screen. His first film in 2012 is Haywire, an enjoyably scuzzy, cold-blooded action flick directed by Steven Soderbergh. Aside from the fun of “getting my head kicked in,” he took the part for the chance to work with Soderbergh before the director makes good on his recent threats to retire from filmmaking. And if the actor were to follow suit and walk away from movies? “I like the idea of being a sculptor. Just me alone, making something—that solitary existence.” At last, the buried wish for a respite from life’s mayhem! But no: “And then you come out,” he adds, “and you’re back into the house with all the kids. That would be perfect.”
Perfect Sense (2011)
Haywire (2011)
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011)
The Impossible (2011)
Jack the Giant Killer (2013)
The whole show has been split into four parts, and are viewable in the 
