On School (Morrison’s Academy):

“I wasn’t much interested in school.  I got into trouble all the time and they kept saying, ‘Attitude Problem!’ I was unaware I had one because I had one, and it was starting to embarrass my father.”

“I was driving into Crieff with my mum and it was pouring with rain.  I remember the windscreen wipers were smacking about and she turned to me and said, ‘Listen, I’ve spoken to your father and if you want to leave school, then you can, if you like.’  I was 16.  I’d just imagined I’d have to go through two more years of school.  I never imagined that I could leave and I said ‘Right, I’ll leave’.”

“Colin and a group of prefects were the ones chosen to tell other pupils to get out of buildings at lunch time.  They were kind of like a mini Gestapo.  They got to wear different color ties and all that.  I started my last year of school the year he had just finished being head boy.  It was hard for me and I just couldn’t hack it anymore.”

“It wasn’t that posh.  We didn’t have our own language or anything.”

“I would have liked to have been [a schoolboy tough].  I was always trying to get into all the different cliques, trying to be part of them all, not being one or the other.  That kind of sums me up, I think.”

“I wasn’t rebellious.  I didn’t burn things down or break things but I was having a hard time with some of my teachers.”

“I got on with the guy [the deputy headmaster].  We had a few great chats together.”

“I felt that I had made the right decision in leaving school.  I felt that the theatre was my school and that I should have been there my whole schooling life.”
 

On Uncle Denis Lawson:

“I looked up to him because he was different.  Growing up in the 1970s, I came from this small, conservative place and he used to come up from London in sheepskin waistcoats, beads, long hair, no shoes, and he’d give you flowers and stuff.  I thought ‘Who is this man?  He’s incredible!”  At that point, he was so different – and I felt the need to be different too.”

“He was an extraordinary character.  There were a lot of tweedy people in Crieff, farmers and stuff, and my uncle would arrive with long hair, wearing a sheepskin waistcoat, beads and no shoes and he would give people flowers.  I’d go ‘Who is this man?’  He fascinated me.”

“This [Star Wars] was the first time I’d been to the cinema to see my uncle Denis in a movie and I thought that that was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life.  It was kind of a double whammy.  The movie threw me – and so did he.”

“It was Denis who helped me with my drama school audition speeches.  One afternoon in the school gym he showed me what it was like to be an actor, doing a speech from Jim Cartwright’s play Road.  There’s a lot of swearing and I played it as a thick-accented Scotsman, which gave it a double meaning – I’d just been beaten up in Glasgow and to get me angry enough, Denis was employing what they call ‘emotional recall’.  ‘Remember their faces,’ he kept saying, ‘you’re not angry enough.  Swear!  Say motherfucker, cunt, shit.’  To begin with it was slightly embarrassing because he was my uncle Denis.  But then suddenly it didn’t matter anymore.  I was in a fury, spitting and screaming these swearwords and Denis was shouting, ‘More, more.’  Then the janitor burst in to see me screaming ‘Motherfucker!’  It was the first serious acting I’d ever done – a kind of controlled loss of control which is a wonderful feeling and it was the first time I’d ever felt that.  Denis showed me how to behave in another way, which is surely all that acting can ever be.”
 

On Acting:

“In Scotland, there are people who want to stay there and do predominantly left-wing gay theatre.  If you’re interested in it, that’s what you’d probably be doing, which is good, but not necessarily for me all the time.  I wanted to do whatever I chose.”

“I thought when Lipstick was aired, my life would change dramatically.  I counted the days to the first transmission.  But nothing happened.  Nobody recognized me – I didn’t get mobbed.  It was a huge anti-climax.  Since then I’ve learned that nothing changes.”

“I’ve been naked in almost everything I’ve been in, really.  In fact, I have it written into my contract.”

“I’ve always been fiercely driven and I’m still driven now.  Maybe now more than ever, because I can’t stop it.  They keep giving me scripts, and I keep fucking doing them.  I can’t say no.”

“I didn’t ever have to do those struggling years.  I’m not guilty about it anyway, a lot of actors want you to feel guilty about that.  I didn’t get the job to be unemployed and I’ve learned a lot from every job I’ve done since.  I’m aware of where I am and how tasty my path has been.”

“I love watching myself up on screen.  It’s fucking great.  I love it because I’m so proud to be up there.  I still can’t believe I’m up there.”

“I was always driven to go as far as I could.  I was always very arrogant about it and I never ever imagined it any other way.  I never considered the alternative.”

“I had an incredible desire to be loved and wanted.  Which is also a lot to do with acting – ‘Please like me!  Oh fucking please, everybody like me!’”

“I was going to be an actor since I was nine.  I didn’t know what that meant.  I didn’t know it meant pretending to be another person.  I suppose I thought about it in terms of being like one of the people in those films.  But from then on everything was geared towards it.”

“A major reason for loving acting is that, even as a kid, I felt it was a very sexy profession.  For me it all started in the theatre.  I used to go to pantomimes as a kid and women would always play the guy and the guys would play the girls.  The women who played the guys would all wear these sexy fishnet stockings and I was obsessed with actresses’ legs from the first pantomime I saw.  I always felt very sexy when I was in the theatre.  I fell in love with actresses all the time.”

“I was always quite arrogant, and didn’t want to do it until I could do it properly, so I avoided school plays.”

“I hadn’t been mistaken all this time.”

“I always thought I was fantastic until I got to drama school, where that notion was soundly thrashed out.”

“I did a lot of young-lover acting.  In my second year [at Guildhall] I played Orlando in As You Like It, which toured to Istanbul and Hamburg.  That boosted my confidence quite a lot, because I’d always been scared of Shakespeare.”

“It’s a funny thing, when you want to become an actor you don’t know quite where it’s going to go.  I wanted to get into drama school and put everything into getting there.  And then you get there and you don’t know what that’s going to be like for three years.  And then when you get out you don’t know where you’re gonna end up.”

“I’ve been naked in loads of things.  I fucking love it.  I especially enjoyed being nude in the play What The Butler Saw for the tweedy fraternity in Salisbury.  People were dying in the aisles.  Old ladies were having coronaries.”

“I am very ambitious.  I always wanted to be an actor and took no notice of people who tried to put me off.  It was the same with getting this part [in Scarlet And Black].  The first time I went to see Ben, I got the impression that I wasn’t what he was looking for.  The second time, I was determined to make him change his mind.”

“I am desperate to do something in my own accent.”

“You get to portray all kinds of people.  I would get terribly bored if I was playing the same kind of character all the time.”

“I’ve had meetings with directors for films where they go, ‘you know, this part isn’t like who you played in Shallow Grave.  Will that be okay?’ ‘Fuck off!  What the fuck are you talking about, you prick?  That’s my job.  It’s what I do.’  So I don’t work with people who say that.”

“It’s all about stories.  It doesn’t matter to me when or where they are set, as long as there is a good tale.”

“It was really difficult.  One minute I was lying on the floor with a syringe in my arm, then I got married, then I was standing in this trailer with a wig and top hat and leather gloves on and for a moment I thought, ‘I can’t go from skinhead drug addict to ha-ha-ha curly wig acting.’”

“I do think there’s almost an element there subconsciously.  For example, when I was playing Alex in Shallow Grave I was quite rude to some people and I think I was slightly more aggressive than I normally am when I was playing Renton.  When you’re concentrating on certain aspects of someone else’s personality, it brings your attention to these aspects in your own character.  But I don’t have to live a character.”

“I’ve read a lot of period adaptations and most of them bore me to death in the script form.”

“All actors like dressing up, regardless of what they might say.  It’s fun, all that stuff.  It’s so different.”

“I feel so incredibly lucky and blessed.”

“If I’m putting on an accent and I have to be angry in a scene, my Scottish accent will always slip through a bit, because we’re very angry people.”

“I just see what happens at the time on the set.”

“To not play a weak character because it might make you look weak as a person?  I would suggest you’re not acting, then. Otherwise you’d just end up doing action movies, carrying a machine gun and looking cool all the time.  A few actors have done that and made a large amount of money, but I wouldn’t suggest they’re the best actors in the world.”

“I’m not trendy at all.  Most of my nice clothes I’ve got form films I’ve been in.”
 

On Watching Himself On Screen:

“I get bored with them [rushes].  Some directors won’t let you see them because they think you’ll get paranoid but with me it’s just boredom – tedious take after take of yourself.”

“I love it to death.  I love watching to see what I have done.  It’s fucking great.”

“I still can’t believe it’s me up there.”
 

On RADA:

“So you come down and you’ve spent about a hundred quid and you’re skint and I walked into the room and there was one guy.  Surely if you’re gonna test people to see if they’re talented and interesting you maybe should have a couple of people, maybe three or four.  But there was one man sitting behind a desk.  I walked in and I was seventeen.  I was gonna be eighteen by the time their year started and I was gonna get in, you know?  And he went ‘So, Ewan, come and sit and have a chat.’  I went, ‘Well, surely you’d like to see my speeches first.’  I had them all under my belt, Shakespeare and modern and everything.  And he went, ‘No, no, come and we’ll have a wee chat.’  He asked, ‘How old are you?’  I said ‘Seventeen.’  He went, ‘Ah, well, you’ve got a good few years auditioning yet.’  I went, ‘Eh?  What?  Excuse me?  I’ve just wedged out a hundred quid to get down here and you’ve written me off already!’”

“They’re sorry now – RADA!”
 

On Work At The Reputable Perth Theatre:

“I never actually acted on that stage.  I was a very humble stagehand.  But I did learn a lot from watching what the other actors did.  That’s often the best way to gain experience.”

“Nothing more challenging than running around in a turban.”

“Nah, it was just the nearest.”

“Those first six months were amazing.  Suddenly I was in the theatre, learning about discipline.  I met all kinds of people for the first time.  I met gay people and I met people who were having affairs.  It was such a different and exciting world compared to the very tiny conservative town I came from.”

“I was such a pain because I was so keep and I wanted to do this and that.  They were all so fed up with me and my dreams.  But they stuck me out and by the end of it I came out a much more mature person.  After that I was ready for my formal training as an actor.”
 

On Shallow Grave:

“The most important thing about the film is the relationship in the flat and the fact that they’ve lived together far too long.  And that rehearsal period was brilliant from the word go.  We used to get up, have breakfast and do scenes in our pajamas.  In a rehearsal room, you’d set up chairs and tables and pretend there was a wall and a door there; but we were in a real flat, so there was a wall there.  It allowed us to get used to each other at the same time as getting used to our characters.”

“He’s [Alex] a lovable bastard.”

“It’s weird to be doing something in my own accent because it makes me feel very naked.  It’s also the first thing that I’ve done in contemporary clothes, which is much harder because I’ve got nothing to hide behind – no cravats, no English accent.”

“I really like playing such a cocky character, but sometimes I don’t find it very challenging.”

“I thought it would be an interesting film, but it was only when I saw the first rough cut and I realized what Danny had done with it that I thought ‘God!  Did we really shoot this film?’  Danny’s so clever and he’s got a great eye.”
 

On Blue Juice:

“I had a great time filming in Cornwall for ten weeks.  I’ve never partied so much in my life.”

“It’s a good laugh.  I mean, it’s a bit muddled in the middle… It’s just a shame, it’s not really very good.”
 

On The Pillow Book:

“This was a very different experience for me, but I found it very stimulating.  I regularly spent between two and four hours having calligraphy applied all over my body – very sensual and something I will not forget in a long while.”

“It was a fantastic movie script.  It was like reading the most beautiful thing, so descriptive.  Reading it was a kick in itself.”

“Jerome is a complex and vain man.  He shamelessly uses and manipulates the publisher and really surprises himself when he falls madly in love with Nagiko.”

“It was fucking freezing cold.  For the calligraphy sequences I went into this cold studio at four in the morning and lay on a bed while they painted my front and often fell asleep during it.  Then I had to stand for two hours while they painted my back, which became a bit tedious, but it was a beautiful film to make.”

“It was fascinating to watch Greenaway work.  He really is an artist.  It sounds wanky, but it’s true – he paints with the camera.”

“It’s as if he’s forgotten to write dialogue.”

“He would set up these big wide shots and I had to act in them for about four minutes.  He’d tell me, ‘you come in here and you end up here and the rest of it is just up to you.’  You don’t know where to pitch it, how far to push it.  I’m terrified to see it, ‘cause I might be crap.”

“I think that’s fucking great.  More people are going to see a piece of art and if it takes my nadgers to get them in there, then all’s the better.”
 

On Trainspotting:

“It was the kind of part you don’t read very often, and it was exactly the part that I personally felt I wanted to play at the time.  I was looking for the part of Mark Renton and there it was – even better than I could have hoped for, because John Hodge is such a brilliant writer.”

“We didn’t really do any drugs because there weren’t any to be had.  I missed the whole rave scene and the ‘E’ culture in the late 1980s.  It’s quite sad.  They really got the wrong guy for the job: Ewan ‘Mr. Nae Drugs’ McGregor.”

“Any mystique I had before about heroin is completely gone now.  I’m not as judgmental about drug addicts as I used to be.  I know more about their suffering, their pain and their need for help.”

 “Oh God, yes, all the toilet stuff was very bleak.  It’s true to say that I felt a bit sick that day.  That day was like ‘Please, can I get off this set, it’s disgusting.’  It was horrible.”

“Heroin is obviously not a good thing, as you can see from what happens to several characters in the film.  But also, we’re not saying these characters are evil bastards, that only evil bastards do drugs.  I don’t think this film will promote heroin use at all, unless people are stupid.”

“They gave it to me and as usual they were very cagey and said, ‘well, you know, we’re not offering you it, but see what you think.’”

“I knew it would be something special.  I was passionate about it from the very beginning.  I could not stop thinking about it.”

“Mark’s a pretty complex guy.  He does drugs and feels that he can make conscious decisions about when he wants them and when he doesn’t.  I found it a real buzz time for me – very exciting.  And, like Shallow Grave, it’s a five-star writing job.”

“I was worried about getting him right.  I was never hard enough to do anything criminal and there were never any drugs to experiment with.”

“That’s such a load of bollocks.  I’ve had to die on screen before, and I don’t know what that’s like either.  I’m not a method actor at all.  So to take heroin for the part would just be an excuse to take heroin.  So I didn’t.”

“I wanted to play him so badly.”

“I felt really good that way, really agile and nice.”

“I think when I got on the plane with Danny to go to Glasgow I still had a wee element of glamour about it.  Till I met these people and listened to their stories.”

“I didn’t hang out with them [railway station junkies].  I just watched them from a distance.  I’d never initiate myself into the group because that would be embarrassing.  I got some physical ideas from them.  In one of the first scenes I used this stooped posture which is an exact rip-off of a guy I saw in Luxembourg.”

“I started to read up about hard drugs and addiction, crack and smack and all that, because addiction is a problem on it’s own, regardless of the drug involved.”

“It’s a nightmare of a drug and it’s a living hell that these people live.”

“I think it would have been a very different film without them [Calton Athletic].  They had one guy, Eamon Doherty, who was on set with us whenever we were using drugs and his experience and expertise in the field was invaluable.”

“It is my arm but molded prosthetically and with a plastic pip going into a little pool of blood underneath so you can see the pulse.”

“I think what means everything is what happens after you’ve put the needle in your arm – everything else is irrelevant.”

“I heard Eamon, who ended up being our advisor, tell his drugs life story and I’d never heard anything like it.  I’d never felt anything like the atmosphere of support in the room – the giving of strength to each other from these hard men and women.  It felt almost religious.  But I didn’t feel that we were using them, because I don’t think that they felt we were. They knew that we were serious and wanting to make the book into a good film.”

“I think we showed it the way it is and of course to begin with there’s got to be some up side to it, otherwise why are people doing it?”

“It’s [heroin’s] the big bad one.  I mean, why is it worse to be injecting heroin into your arm than to be doing a line of coke in a toilet?  I suppose socially it’s to do with the needle.  Your gut reaction to syringes is to recoil in shock and horror – the idea of an implement putting things into your bod makes it all seem very clinical and medical and that sets it apart.”

“The tools of the trade are so mundane.  After doing this film picking up a syringe is like picking up a cigarette.”

“I panicked.  It’s the hardest thing about acting.  I think Danny knows that.  Having a nervous breakdown, screaming and shouting is the easiest part.  Actors fuckin’ love doing all that, never happier than when they’re crying their eyes out.”

“I quite like him [Renton], but I don’t like the fact that he’s given up on everything.”

“For whatever reason, good or bad, from the beginning they were intent on making it exactly ninety minutes long.”

“They could all be working in America.  But they came back to Glasgow to make a film about guys on heroin.  They’re risky geezers!”

“He doesn’t give a shit about anyone.”

“If someone’s constantly telling you ‘Don’t do this.  Don’t do that,’ especially as a kid, the first thing you want to do is go and do it.  It’s much more responsible to say, ‘It’ll make you feel fantastic for a short while, but then it will lead to this, this and this.’”

“Apart from doing all the Press, I missed the buzz.  But I’m delighted it’s been so successful.  I was passionate about it and it’s a nice reflection of my taste that people think it’s good as well.”

“I got fucking strip-searched at Chicago airport.  My visa had Warner Brothers on it and some customs buy asked me about my movies and I said the only ones known in America were Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. And he said “Trainspotting!” and writes something on my form and when I get to the red and green bit they searched me everywhere, even up the arse!  Fucking stupid bastard!”
 

On Family:

“People are incredibly rude about it sometimes.  Like, ‘What?  You’re married?’  Strange reaction to have.  Proves what people’s ideas about marriage are.  ‘We’re having a baby.’ ‘What?’ As if it’s the end of the world.  Of course, it’s the start of a brilliant world.”

“I wasn’t very satisfied with it any more and then I met Eve and it really did feel very, very different.  I knew from the first day I saw her.”

“The second I saw Eve I thought, if I could be with her, it would be like nothing I’ve ever had before.  I believe I’ll be with her forever and that we’ll go through everything together.  Otherwise I wouldn’t have got married.”

“I am in a position to insist that they come, and if anyone doesn’t like that, then I won’t make the film.”

“I don’t go to work and then turn into someone else when I return home.  I am the same person.  My family and my career are my life.  They are not separate.”

“If she’s writing, she can write anywhere we are in the world.  She’s not about to give up on herself.  I wouldn’t want her to anyway.”

“I like going out and Eve likes staying home.  So there’s some balance there, plus a lot of arguments.  French women can be difficult – but I like difficult women.”

“Eve never has to worry about me straying.  She knows I’d never do that.  She knows I’m a scallywag, but I’m not one who’s gonna fuck around with her.”
 

On The Birth Of Clara:

“I wasn’t prepared to be that frightened.”

“All I was thinking was, ‘Oh no!  I’m not big enough for this, not quite sure if I can handle this one.’”

“That’s something you can’t put into words.”

“You can never go back now.”
 

On Emma:

“Frank Churchill is the life and soul of the party.  Sickeningly so.  It’s all, ‘Ha, ha, ha, Frank’s here, now the fun will start.’  But there’s a reason for this over-the-top heartiness.  He’s secretly engaged to Jane and knows the rich aunt who had adopted him in London will not approve the match.  So when he makes one of his periodic visits to Highbury to see his father, he makes a big thing of playing the field by flirting with everything in skirts.”

“The book is terribly tedious.”

“It’s a good book to take to bed because it sends you to sleep.”

“The wig had a lot to do with it.  Also the accent.  So, as a result, I wasn’t really talking to anyone.  I was just trying to sound right.  I think the film’s all right but I was so crap, I was terrible in it.  I didn’t believe a word I said.  I just thought, ‘Shut the fuck up, Frank.’  It was the first time for me.  I was really embarrassed about it and I’m not paranoid about that usually.  But this time I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“It comes to nothing.  As does his part in the end.”

“Toni Collette was brilliant, so funny and such a nice person.  And there was Jamie Cosmo who played my dad in Trainspotting and played my dad in Emma as well.”

“I was under the fucking sofa!”

“If you miss and hit the wall every now and again it doesn’t matter.  Failing is important too.”
 

On Hollywood:

“I’ve always wanted to go to Hollywood and drive big cars and be in big movies.  But I don’t fucking want to get caught in that thing we saw in Hollywood Men, where they’ll do anything to become a star.”

“When I met with agents in L.A., they would tell me you had to do two movies for yourself and then two for the business.  And I thought, ‘Fuck off.  No, you don’t.  You do every film because you want to do good work; because you’re interested in making good movies and working with good people.’  To do a crappy event movie for a lot of money, like Independence Day – I would never taint my soul with that crap.”

 “I’ve realized I’ve been waiting my whole life for that guy [who talks in American trailers] to say my name.  He just drives from one nightclub to the next in a big old car, eating glass and smoking Marlboros and drinking scotch.  And then he goes, ‘Ewan McGregor!’”

“I don’t like it there.  The way they just talk business; it has got nothing to do with making good films.  The studio system in L.A. is about A-list, B-list, C-list.  About money.  They just make me cold and they turn out such awful crap.”

“If you’re a movie star at my age in Hollywood, agents mainly think they can get you $3 million for a picture and they wouldn’t let you do a movie for lower – say, if you really wanted to do a low-budget film with your mates.  Now, I wouldn’t give anyone that kind of power over my choice of films.”

“It’s like the world’s biggest caravan park.”

“I think that in Britain we tend to learn the lines and just say them the way that the writer wrote them.  Whereas in America, actors seem to be more like Jazz musicians.  They act around the line and ad lib their way through.  The writer’s word isn’t all.”

“Break into what?  A system of bad movies?”

“That’s all it’s about, that town.  It’s only for making movies; there’s nothing else.”

“I couldn’t live there.  In this valium lifestyle, you’d quickly lose critical faculty.”

“I don’t care enough about breaking into America to give a shit about it.”

“It’s made very tempting for you to leave.  But I’ll go and do films wherever.  I don’t see the problem with going to do a film in America then coming home.  Nightwatch was the same deal, the same process.  The technicians wore bigger tool belts and I suppose the star system is slightly more extreme in America – but that is the only difference.”

“The money sound can get out of hand.”
 

On Brassed Off:

“It’s a very passionate film about the destruction of a community.”

“He’s in a desperate situation and is genuinely trying to hold on to the final threads of optimism.  But it’s an uphill struggle.”

“It’s a really brilliantly political piece of filmmaking.”

“I saw three-bedroomed houses for sale for 5000 pounds, people desperately trying to get out of there.  I was there for seven weeks and, at the end, I was just so saddened by it all that I was dying to get away.  I hope the people there like it, because we’re telling their story really.”
 

On Nightwatch:

“I wonder if he just directed the same film again?”

“This was the perfect example of a film they would not leave alone.  There were constant reshoots, including the ending, and they took all the interesting stuff out, making it bland.  The original concept was the reason I accepted it in the first place.  I had massive strands of the character removed, which is insulting.”
 

On Serpent’s Kiss:

“I am playing two different levels most of the time – who I am, an who I went them to think I am.  It was really interesting to toy with that – sometimes letting it slip.”

“I was offered a lot of other films, but I was always going to do this.”

“The voice coach recorded the whole part onto a tape in a Dutch accent, and I listened to it constantly for three weeks.”
 

On A Life Less Ordinary:

“I really look forward to reading everything John has written because it’s always so unexpected and so funny.  A Life Less Ordinary was everything I could have hoped for and I jumped at the opportunity to do it.”

“I loved working with Cameron.  She’s brilliant fun on and off the set, and I think that comes across in her performance.”

“I’ve got a bullethead look.”

“I do tend to be cast as cynical characters, but A Life Less Ordinary is a love story – albeit of an odd sort – and I play a sweet, innocent guy.  Everything’s going a bit weird for him though, and there’s more humor in this than anything I’ve previously done.”

“You worry about famous American actresses being so up their arse, but she’s [Cameron Diaz] a cracker.  No pretence and no hassle at all.”

“She’s a special girl.  You can see in some of the scenes we’re genuinely having a laugh with each other and that makes it so much warmer.  It heightens all the romance and all the fun scenes.  There are real twinkles in our eyes.”

“I’ve never been sworn at so much.  My friends were like – ‘Fuck you bastard!’”

“Things like that really piss Colin off.  He’s fucking gutted and I love it!  I had to get her [Cameron] to sign a picture for him which he has above his bed.”

“I loved the idea of the romantic comedy.  I tend to be cast as cynical characters, but in A Life Less Ordinary I play a sweet, innocent guy.  There’s more humor in this than anything I’ve previously done.”

“It’s just easier working with the team that way.  They’re used to me speaking with a Scottish accent.”

“People expect it to be what it’s not.  I think it’s risky because it’s an American romantic comedy.”

“I was more aware of being funny, but that isn’t done by trying to play the comedy.  You’re still playing the character in a real situation.”
 

On Being in Utah:

“I’ve got a black woolen hat and it’s got ‘Pervert’ written across the front of it.  It’s the name of a clothing label.  And I was with my wife and my baby at the supermarket and I didn’t think.  I just put my hat on Clara’s head, because it was cold.  And the looks!  I couldn’t figure out why I was getting death looks.  And then I realized my 10-month-old baby’s wearing a hat with the word ‘Pervert’ written on it, and these people were like, ‘There’s Satan!  There’s Satan out with his kid!’  And then, I made a point of wearing it every time we went out.”

“One night I beat the fucking shit of Danny Boyle on the pool table.  The next day he said that he couldn’t believe it because I was so drunk I could hardly speak and yet I was hammering the balls in.”

“The weirdest fucking people I’ve ever met.”

“The whole town [Salt Lake City] is built next to this huge, stagnant and stinking lake.  I was pleased to get away from it.”
 

On Star Wars:

“He [Denis Lawson] didn’t think I should do it.  But I think it would’ve been very hard to turn down.  When you’re my age and you were out there cheering when the first Star Wars came out, what are you going to do when they offer you one of the leads in the new film?  Say ‘No’?  No way!  It would take a bigger man than me to say no.”

“These movies are very different.  The great thing is that I can do these films and not have to bother doing a blockbuster again.  I can just get on with the kind of movies that I want to do.”

“I have to get his accent.  He’s got this very specific older man’s voice.  It’d be great if I could trace it back to his youth and get it right.”

“They’re hard to work those movies.  You don’t sit and bang out the scenes and then work with scenes and get into the actor thing that we like to do, because there are so many other things going on around you or things that will be there behind you or whatever.  So it’s a slog, really.  But every day I had a Star Wars moment where I would go, “Ahh…I’m in Star Wars!’”

“The first day I got dressed properly it was quite a moment for a boy from Scotland to stand there and look in the mirror.  ‘Jedi McGregor!’”

“The first take and my lightsaber literally flew out of my hands.  No one tells you the sabers have about 10 ‘D’ batteries in them.  They numb your hands.  I tossed the saber up in the air and it ended up hitting a technician in the head!”

“It was overwhelming the first time he said, ‘Okay, you come in the spaceship, you start it up…’ And we were suddenly on the floor laughing.  You come in the spaceship and start it up.  I wonder how that is?  Is there a key?”

“I looked at an interview Alec Guinness did when he played Obi-Wan.  He said, ‘My feeling about Star Wars is that I delivered the lines and I hope they do the backgrounds nicely.’  I feel the same way.”

“Can you imagine what it’ll be like sitting sown in some screening room, the curtain goes up and there it is – the new movie?  Magic.”

“In my life, it was another job.  Of course, it is a huge job because it’s Star Wars.  But I’ve got a body of work behind me.  I don’t feel like, ‘Oh I’ve made it.’  I feel like ‘Oh, I’m in Star Wars.’”

“Princess Leia was probably my first serious crush.”

“I’ve really come a long way.  But when I heard I’d got Star Wars I was so excited.  I felt just like a big kid.”

“I was actually screaming out loud.  Thank God there were no Stormtroopers there at the time or I would have been out of control.  I always wanted to be in a stormtrooper outfit.  They’re the sexiest uniform that’s ever been in the movies.”

“George didn’t think the Jedi was quite like the way I perceived him and every time I tried to put in a bit of a joke or something, he would say, ‘Cut that smile out.’  I was looking for the right moment to drop my Jedi knickers and pull out my real lightsaber.  By now my audience will appreciate I have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Oooh!  I nearly shat myself!  I just about died with excitement.  I mean, no one gets to do that – but I did.”

“When I first met R2-D2, I almost went down on the ground.  It was a bit like meeting the queen – it was a very honored moment.  I went home one day and my wife was sitting with a lot of her mates and I go, ‘I worked with R2-D2 today!’ and they all looked at me and went ‘Who?’  I guess it’s a boy’s thing.  The chicks just don’t get it.”

“Yeah, look what happened to him [Harrison Ford].  Look what happened to Mark Hamill, though.”
 

On Personal Taste:

“If it was black and white and romantic, it was good enough for me.”

“I like swearing.  After every shot [on a golf course at 14], I’d get really angry, screaming, ‘Fuck!’  Eventually, this guy drove up in a tractor and told me I had to leave.  I walked back to the clubhouse all on my own in shame.”

“My mates used to give me a hard time about that [Scottish country dancing], but I couldn’t help myself because I love singing and dancing.”

“When I was a kid I spent a lot of my time being Elvis Presley.  There’s something about his movies, the fact that they’re so bad.  But he was this cool guy who always had a good time and was always surrounded by beautiful women.”

“The short has become an odd thing out, which is a shame.  A props master on Shallow Grave directed a short called The Last Ten Minutes.  It went out in a lot of cinemas before Shallow Grave – as a B-movie, if you like – and it was brilliant.  I remember how nice that was.  You’ve got to make your short film to be seen and to get into the industry.  There has to be that opportunity for talented people.”
 

On London:

“There was a big gear change for me when I came to London.  I’d go to parties at Denis Lawson’s place, where I’d meet really great actors like Zoe Wanamaker, Peter Capaldi and Richard E. Grant, who I’ve since worked with.”

“I remember when I’d moved into a beautiful flat near Denis, going up to Primrose Hill one night and looking down over London and feeling that I’d made it.”

“I had this amazing bachelor pad, and the things that went on there!”
 

On Sex:

“I didn’t know what it was about.  Then somebody took hold of me and gave me a good one.”

“Simulating what is really a private act in front of millions of people isn’t really an issue.  It’s just like doing dance steps.  I wasn’t uptight about it because Alice and Rachel weren’t.  They just went with the scene.  They were brilliant.”

“It can cause emotional damage, to watch your loved one being intimate with someone else, even if it is part of the job.”

“We’re both straight guys, but it was absolutely the same as doing a love scene with an actress.”

“It’s actually much more exciting being in a sex scene with a man.  It’s something outside of my normal experience.  It’s another example of an extreme situation – snogging a man.”
 

On His First TV Appearance:

“They had to keep cutting to the pianist.”
 

On His Only Attempt At Screenwriting:

“It was about a summer I spent in Edinburgh during the arts festival when I was with Hannah [a girlfriend].  It was a fantastic summer and I was trying to write something about that time.”
 

On Being A Cup Of Coffee In Drama School:

“How do you do that?  And why should it matter?”
 

On His Casting Director Audition:

“It was a fuckin’ nightmare!  Just such a huge opportunity, totally terrifying.”

“I was sitting there, frantically rubbing my stumps, trying to remember my line.  It was a really dark speech.  The whole thing had one moment of light relief in it, one little joke, and that’s what I missed.”
 

On Lipstick On Your Collar:

“Hopper imagines himself to be all the great rock ‘n’ rollers like Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.  And I got to be them all!”

“I was really terrified when I did Gene Vincent. … They kept shouting ‘Nah, nah!  That’s not right!’  It was bad enough having to do all this lip-synching for the cameras and act at the same time, never mind getting crits from everyone in the audience.  It was good fun though.”

“I think he [Dennis Potter] is a genius and although it took a while to get to know him, I really respect him.  He’s a brave man and had a lot of philosophical things to say about acting.  He gave me a lot of very clued-up advice.”
 

On Billy Connolly:

“He likes getting his kit off and so do I!”
 

On Scarlet & Black:

“Julien was extraordinarily proud, angry, arrogant and brave.  He is driven by this obsessive desire to succeed, yet he never purposefully does anyone any harm.”

“It was such a sexy time, a lot sexier than the 1950s.  I get to wear very tight trousers and short jackets with tails, so it’ll be all hips again.”

“It was all terribly exciting.  The riding, the sword-fighting, the action.  There was a real kick in it.”

“I was part of a guard of honor waiting to greet the King.  My horse was meant to rear up with the excitement of it all but the first time it went up, I came flying off.  Then I must have squeezed him in the wrong way so he went even farther up.  I came off sideways and didn’t let go of the reins, which pulled him down on top of me.  If the horse had been less experienced I would have had a broken leg but I am quite sure he deliberately came down very gently.  I swear to God he was trying not to hurt me.”

“I should have put it behind me and just got on with life.  So after Scarlet And Black I walked away and did something else.  Mind you, it wasn’t easy.  The whole job was all-consuming from start to finish.  I’ve never felt as passionate about anything as I have about this.”
 

On Family Style:

“This guy [Matthew Cooper] is just driven to write and if it wasn’t for something like this, he would never have been found out, unless it was years down the line when he finally plugged through.  This was an incredible way in for him, a great window.  It’s a really intense learning process for both the writer and the director.  You’re being shown the way and helped out by people who know how it works, but you don’t have to adhere to anyone.  You’re just doing it because somebody likes your work.”

“I’ve never had a showreel as such, but I was so proud of the short that I showed it to a lot of people.  It’s been really useful to me.”
 

On Shrinkage:

“No fuckin’ worries, there, darlin’!”
 

On His Wedding:

“We cooked for each other at nights, and drank fine wines in the garden.  It felt like absolutely what we wanted to do.  That’s very unusual when you have a dream, to actually see it totally realized, which our marriage was.  It was perfect.”
 

On Boyle, Hodge, and Macdonald:

“I’m never happier than when I’m working with them.”

“They have their ideas, their vision, and they don’t allow people to compromise them.”

“Danny never lets me down. I’d do anything for him – paint my arse blue and run round naked in Central Part if he wanted me to.  He drains your creative juices, and makes you work.  But you want to push everything out for him anyway.”

“I would turn down any of these bloomin’ multi-million pound things if it meant conflicting with something he wanted me to do.  Whether I’ll play the lead in their movies all the time is up to them.  Their loyalty to me is 100%, but if I wasn’t right for the character then, of course, I’d respect their decision.”
 

On Romance:

“I made an effort to be unashamed about it, because we’re surrounded by so much cynicism these days that it’s difficult to pull it off.  We all do it, but nobody wants to watch it anymore, which I think is a bit of a shame.”
 

On Gun Shops:

“It was fuckin’ terrifying.  Just full of things to kill people.”
 

On “ER”:

“I was chatting with my agent in Los Angeles about the program and he said he represented some of ER’s cast.  A couple of days later they came back and said, ‘Do you want to be in one?’ and I said yes.  I did it because I thought it would be a laugh to see myself in one of the episodes with people I’m used to watching in it.  And it was.”

“I play a Scottish maniac.”

“George Clooney really is a very nice guy.  He’s very fatherly on set and looks after everyone.”

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” [Julianna Margulies]

“If we slow down for a few seconds, the audience can go to one of a hundred other channels.”

“It was a much faster shoot than anything I’ve ever been used to.”

“I didn’t do ER to help me break into the states.”

“I haven’t watched the program since, because now I know the set and stuff, the magic has sort of gone.”
 

On Clara’s Meningitis:

“By the time I got there, all I saw was this little gray baby with tubes up her nose, wired to a heart machine.  Eve was kicking herself with guilt over the whole thing, although she did brilliantly.  She got her in there, after all.  If it had been twenty-four hours later, it would have been too late.”

“It’s the scariest thing that has ever happened – and the happiest.”

“He [a journalist] wanted to know about my daughter being ill and I just about took his head off.  He used her Christian name.  I could have fucking swung for the cunt.”
 

On Substance:

“I love a pint.  I love loads of them.”
 

On Velvet Goldmine:

“My character is a loose amalgam of a couple of people.  Better not say anymore in case I get sued.  But it’s a great story.”

“They offered me he job and there are four or five concert number sin it.  So I said I’d do it, if they let me sing live.  It seemed like a great idea at the time.  Of course, five minutes before I had to go on, I was a nervous wreck.  But it was just brilliant.  I was able to be a rock star for a couple of minutes.”

“I was trying to get over this Oasis hump thing.  Since Oasis came out I’ve sort of had this desperate desire to be a rock star so I thought if I played one maybe I would get over it.”

“I was never really into glam rock.  I thought it was a bit silly.  I remember Top of the Pops and seeing these guys with weird hair and make-up and thinking they look a shambles.”

“Because I’m the American guy I’m wearing lots of leathers and hipsters so I got off quite lightly in terms of what some of the other guys had to wear – high camp stuff.  I got the kind of grungy look, which is good.”

“I loved dressing up.  I kept saying, ‘more eyeliner, more!’ I was such a slut.”

“I looked at Iggy Pop stuff and different things from the period just to get some of his movies down.  He’s an incredible performer.  It’s been interesting to try and get him.  The voice I tried to get came from listening to Robbie Robertson of The Band.  If it ends up like Kurt Cobain, it’s completely by chance.”

“At one point it was four in the morning and we were doing this outdoor concert number and all I had on was a pair of silver leather flared jeans and platform shoes.  There were a lot of hippies there and as the glam-rock kicked in they decided that they didn’t like what they were hearing.  Gradually, through the song, they started booing and telling me to get off.  So the director said, ‘Just flash, give them a moonie.’  So I did.”

“I was mad when I was doing it.  I ended up butt-naked in front of 400 extras with my trousers round my ankles, pulling my cock and going, ‘fuck off!’ in a field somewhere south of London.”

“That was the heart of my performance.  That’s what that whole film will always be about for me.  The thing is, I enjoy extraordinary situations.  I thrive on excess in lots of respects.  When I was standing onstage drunk, pulling my penis, bending over and showing them my arseholes – that was an extraordinary situation to find myself in.  I got such a buss out of it.  The first time I did a take, I turned around and the end and everyone – crew, the extras – was literally speechless.  It was a great moment.  Nobody had anything to say.”

“The concert stuff was where I really got my rocks off.  I dived into the audience just after pulling everything out again.  It’s great to be getting paid well for doing something that would normally end you up in prison.  Women are always being asked to get their kit off.  So it’s only fair that I get mine out.  I’m making a feminist stance by shaking my willy around as much as possible.”

“Iggy’s got a great love for his penis.  I can’t say I feel quite the same way. I mean, I don’t go around thinking ‘Hey, I’ve got a huge cock.  Go on.  Show me yours and let’s compare sizes.’  But at the same time, when people ask me if I’d be so keen to flash my willy if it was small, I always think, ‘Well how the fuck am I supposed to know?’”

“I was supposed to be shagging Christian Bale and it went on so long at one point I put my head down beside Christian, away from the camera, and whispered, “I would have come by now, if this was for real.”  Then I looked over to see the camera crew packing up.  The fuckers didn’t say ‘cut’ and we were still giving it our all!”

“It was hard work.  I got really pissed off because I generally wanted to rehearse the scenes first.  But Todd’s approach was, ‘No.  We’ll just shoot it.’  We never rehearsed any scenes.  It was almost like shooting by numbers.  It was frustrating.  I’m slightly spoiled by working with Danny Boyle.  This is the trouble now.  It gets harder and harder to work with other people because Danny does it the right way, I think.  Todd’s done amazing stuff.  He’s fantastic and I love him to death. It’s all to do with time, not his direction.  It was having too tight a schedule.”

“I’d be dead.  The relentless touring, the buggering about, the fuelled consumption from the endless parties, performing in front of thousands of people.  If I did that for more than a week I’d sink into a terrible depression.  We have rock stars for a reason.  We need them to do it for us.”

“When I saw the movie at Edinburgh Festival I was truly shocked.  I was like ‘Look what I’m doing!’  I was truly exhilarated by watching myself.  Does that sound arrogant?  It’s because I wasn’t in control of myself when I was doing.  I think I’d have made a great rock star, just like Elvis.”
 

On Desserts:

“It’s a film I was faxed while I was making another movie.  It arrived on just one sheet of paper and it made me laugh so much I just had to do it.  We shot for one day up on the west coast of Scotland and it’s quite an interesting little piece of work.”
 

On Motorbiking:

“It’s my passion, and always will be. Until the day I break every bone in my body. I managed to convince the producers of Moulin Rouge to insure me on my bike, so I think now that I’ve got my foot in the door now for future shoots. I’ll be able to bike my way around every film shoot.  Magic.”
 

On His Accent:

“I was just talking about the Scottish accent to someone in Cannes the other day and it’s definitely true; there’s something very appealing, in a naughty kind of way, about the Scottish accent. It’s hard to define what it is; maybe it’s the hard man image – the kind of Celtic Asterix thing – or maybe it’s the fact that Scotland – like Ireland – has been oppressed for so long, people feel an instant sympathy. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m not exactly complaining either. It’s helped me in many a situation, and with many a lady.”
 

On Nicole Kidman And Rumors:

“Yeah, you’re always going to be susceptible to that kind of arse really.  Complete nonsense, of course. Nicole was still very much with Tom whilst we were making the film, and you don’t tend to mess around with the wife of someone like that. We became good friends, of course, as you would when you’re making a film where you’ve got to sing your heart out to one another, so when they did split up, I felt for her enormously. She was very brave to face the press in Cannes, given what she’d just been through.”
 

On Moulin Rouge:

“I don’t tend to get all that excited about seeing my own films, no. I often feel I’ve moved on to something else, and it’s no longer mine, but with Moulin Rouge, I felt we’d aimed very high, and I was nervous as hell as to whether we’d reached our goals. And for the first fifteen minutes or so, as you’re hit with all these colors and characters and wild
camera angles, you’re pretty much punch drunk in your seat. But then the love story kicks in – really from the scene where Nicole and I first meet – and I was gripped. I was jumping up and down, biting my nails, screaming, wondering what was going to happen to these people. Even though I’d actually been through it all before…”

“And the great thing was that the Duke, or should I say Richard, said to me after the screening, ‘I feel like I’ve just come fourteen times’. We were both completely swept up in it. When I watched it for the second time, in Cannes, I became much more aware of myself in it. But I think that’s just an actor’s thing. I became more and more aware of how I might be playing a scene, and if I looked knackered, things like that. I wear reading glasses, so I took them off and put them in my pocket so I couldn’t see it so clearly. And I enjoyed it much more then, because I stopped looking at me.”

“It pissed me off that at the press conference at Cannes, the journalists were only interested in Nicole’s separation. The French press are very minty – and I can say this because I’m married to a French girl – and they over-intellectualize every single nuance. Asking things like, ‘How were you hoping to effect the world with this movie?’ and I’m just like, ‘Fuck off’. So there was a lot of that, and a lot of the Tom and Nicole questions, which I felt was unfortunate. I felt very much for Nicole, but she dealt with it like a trooper. I was disappointed after that, I must say. It didn’t get the kind of reception that I thought it would, but people told me that Cannes is like that. They’re all too cool to actually jump up and down about anything.”

“I couldn’t see this playing as a film for all the family. But that’s what makes it so special really. At a time when everyone’s trying very, very hard to reach a big audience – and it’s true of independents as it is of the big studios – to have a film that doesn’t compromise, that doesn’t try to be liked but demands to be loved, well, that’s something to be applauded right there.”
 

On Nora:

“I don’t think it was that kind of movie really. It’s a fascinating story, and Susan Lynch did an incredible job playing Nora, but we all knew going into it that Nora wasn’t the kind of film that was going to pack ‘em in at the local multiplex. It worked though, which is the main thing. Films like that tend to stick around.”
 

On Future Plans:

“Increase my workload to ten films a year, and then take over the world.  Once I’ve had a spin on my bike, of course.”