"What I've been told to say," Ewan
McGregor announces after chugging down his third beer, "is that we're in
negotiations. But the truth is, I want to do it, they want me to do it,
so I'm doing it."
The 'it' in question, of course, is
only the role of a lifetime, playing the most beloved Jedi master ever
to tangle with the Dark Side. As the whole world is about to learn, McGregor,
26, has been signed to star as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the new Star
Wars prequels, a bit of casting news that instantly makes him the biggest
thing out of Scotland since argyle socks, or at least since Sean Connery.
"Actually," says the scruffily charming
actor in his bristly Highland burr, "I really want to play Princess Leia.
Stick some big pastries on my head. Now, that would be interesting."
Last year, McGregor created a huge
splash--literally--by chasing an opium suppository down a toilet bowl in
the indie hit Trainspotting. that harrowing performance won him
an Actor of the Year award from the London Film Critics Circle and made
him one of the hottest young thespians in the realm. Next to those battling
brothers from Oasis, he's become the biggest pop god in England, a national
antihero for the post-punk-but-still-pissed-off generation. And yet, despite
Trainspotting's respectable run in the U.S. (it earned $16 million),
most Americans haven't a clue who he is--even if they did happen to catch
his special guest spot on ER last February, in which he held Julianna
Margulies hostage in a convenience store for the show's entire hour.
So who is this man who would be Kenobi?
For starters, he's the type of guy who isn't afraid to drop trou in public,
as American moviegoers are about to discover. In Peter Greenaway's new
arthouse mind-bender The Pillow Book, which opened June 6, McGregor
plays a bisexual Englishman who lets his Hong Kong girlfriend draw calligraphy
all over his bare body--including his unsheathed, um, lightsaber.
"Being naked was far more worrisome
for everyone else on the set than it was for me," he reports. "I actually
enjoyed it, the truth be told. There was something incredibly powerful
about it. Usually you'd get arrested for that sort of thing, but I got
paid."
This month, American audiences can
also see McGregor--fully clothed--in Brassed Off, a small-but-scrappy
English film about a doomed mining town. In the fall, he'll be costarring
with Nick Nolte and Patricia Arquette in Nightwatch, his first American
thriller, in which he'll play a morgue attendant who gets mixed up in a
murder. He'll also turn up as a hapless janitor who kidnaps Cameron Diaz
in A Life Less Ordinary, a romantic comedy by the same writer-director-producer
team that made Trainspotting. And he's just finished shooting Todd
Haynes' Velvet Goldmine, a David Bowie-Iggy Pop-inspired love story
set in the glam-rock '70s, due out next year.
It's an eclectic slate of projects,
with the emphasis on smart, offbeat independent films--in other words,
the sort of movies that don't spin off many toy tie-ins. "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," he says. "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."
Of course, there's a truckload of
irony pulling up here: The untainted maverick is about to start shooting
what could easily become the most commercially successful even movies ever
made. If dusted-off, 20-year-old releases can rake in a half billion bucks
worldwide, imagine what sort of cash flow a fresh batch of Star Wars
flicks will generate. Still, McGregor sees a difference. "I don't think
of them as event movies," he says. "It's not like being in Robocop 5
or something. The Star Wars movies are way beyond studio pictures.
They're enormous. I can't say no."
There are certainly plenty of reasons
to say yes--like his 16-month-old daughter, Clara (by wife Eve Maurakis,
a French costume designer he met while filming an English TV production
of Charlotte's Web two years ago). "I was 6 years old when Star
Wars came out," he explains. "I remember standing outside school waiting
to be picked up, so excited. And my daughter's going to be 6 when the new
Star Wars movies are out. That's fucking lovely in a way, you know?"
There's another family connection
to the series as well: McGregor says his uncle, actor Denis Lawson (Local
Hero) was "the only X-wing pilot to survive all three" of the original
Star Wars movies. Lawson, not surprisingly, was also the inspiration
for McGregor's own early acting ambitions.
"I was brought up in a small conservative
town (Crieff) in Scotland," he says. "And my uncle used to come up from
London in the '70s wearing sheepskin waistcoats and beads, with no shoes
and long hair, giving people flowers and stuff. I just went, wow. Right
then I decided to become an actor--even though I had no idea what that
meant."
What it meant initially was leaving
school at 16, a brief stint at a Scottish repertory theater, then three
years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. What it means
now is that McGregor can barely stroll the streets of London without triggering
a reenactment of the train station mob scenes in A Hard Day's Night.
"It's not that bad, but it is on the cusp of becoming a problem," says
Trainspotting director Danny Boyle. "All that constant recognition
gets tiresome after awhile. He can't even pick his nose in public."
Visiting New York, downing brews in
a Chelsea restaurant, McGregor couldn't seem less concerned with the perils
of fame--or maybe he's simply relishing his last taste of American anonymity.
Unassuming, unpretentious, and on the way to becoming utterly sloshed,
he comes across as the ultimate anti-celebrity, a bloke for all seasons.
In any case, if anybody in the room is staring at him, it's only because
he's been partying all night and sort of looks it (he's still got a big
ink stamp mark from a nightclub smudged on his wrist). "I love New York,"
he murmurs happily into his beer.
Of course, now that he's signed for
Star Wars, these sorts of quiet public moments are history. As the
new Kenobi, he'll be swarmed by fans in every restaurant and nightclub
in every city on the planet. It's a huge change in his life, an instant
thrust into global superstardom. "Ewan's got the world at his feet," as
Brassed Off director Mark Herman puts it, "and that makes this a
dangerous time for him." To deal with the intense pressure, McGregor is
using that old Jedi mind trick of trying not to think about it. Instead,
he's concentrating on his killer Alec Guinness impersonation.
"I have to get his accent,"
he says. "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." He takes a swig
of beer, clears his throat, and gives it a whirl. "Yooz the Force, Luke.
Stretch out your feeeelings."
Now, if only he could nail that Carrie
Fisher impersonation.
Benjamin Svetkey
Entertainment Weekly
#383 June 13, 1997
