Box Office Magazine 2003

FIELD OF DREAMS:

Ewan McGregor brings legend to life in Tim Burton's "Big Fish" A "FISH" TALE Ewan McGregor Tells a Whopper in Tim Burton's "Big Fish" By Annlee Ellingson A big fish in a small pons. It's a familiar idiom, one that describes those exceptional individuals who are so smart, so talented, so ambitious, so charismatic that it seems their environment simply can't contain them. Usually the expression is used to characterize someone who prefers to remain within a small community where there is little competition, where his or her standing won't be usurped by more cunning sharks, more friendly dolphins, more powerful whales. This isn't the case, however, in Columbia's holiday film that borrows its title from the phrase. Nor with its star: Ewan McGregor is a big fish. A big fish in a big pond. Since his first starring role in "Shallow grave" and his star-making turn in the cult hit "Trainspotting," McGregor, who left his home in the Scottish Highlands at 16 to study acting, has parlayed his roguish good looks and his fearlessness in front of a camera -- whether the role requires full-frontal nudity (his dad is reported to have faxed "I'm glad to see you've inherited one of my major assets" after one such display) or belting his own vocals -- into a career that's prolific and diverse. Among the more than 20 films he's made in just a decade are Peter Greenaway's erotic "Pillow Book," Baz Luhrmann's anachronistic musical "Moulin Rouge!," the 60's sex-farce homage "Down With Love" and, of course episodes I, II and III of one of the most successful sci-fi film franchises in the galaxy. Now, with shooting on the third and final installment of "Star Wars" a few weeks behind him, McGregor is working nights on the upcoming thriller "Stay" while fitting in a interview with BOX OFFICE for Tim Burton's fantasy "Big Fish" after a photo shoot for the New York Times.

McGregor's filmography is rich and varied, but with one common theme: story. "I just purely go on how it reads," he says of the process by which he chooses projects. "I don't have any checklist, or I don't have any kind of method of choosing what to do other than if it feels like a really good story or if it reads like a really good film. I kind of like the feeling you get if you're reading a really good book and you don't want it to end. If it feels like that when you read a new script, then it's one that you'd want to do." Of his latest project, "Big Fish," McGregor says, "It's about something very, very universal: our relationship with our parents." In the movie, Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) is in the twilight of his life when his penchant for tall tales has seemingly irrevocably strained his relationship with his no-nonsense son William (Billy Crudup). The way Bloom tells it, his colorful past includes a witch, a giant and Siamese twins; a haunted forest that shelters a town so perfect no one ever leaves it; a three-year unpaid stint with the circus, just to learn the name of a girl of his dreams; and a Biblical flood maroons his car in the branches of a tree. But this leaves William wondering whether anything his father has ever told him is true and whether he'll ever really be able to get to know his old man. "By the end of the film, it really makes you think [that] if our parents are still alive, make sure that if there's any problems they're reconciled before it's too late," says McGregor, whose own folks were schoolteachers and whose brother is a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. " And I think if it has been too late, it's a killer film. If somebody's lost a parent, and they didn't sew up their differences before the end, I think it's going to be a really killer of a movie for them, you know?"

McGregor plays the hyperbolic younger version of Bloom, "It's playing a man's retrospective look on life," he says of the role. "It's playing a man's memories, really." In addition to liking the script, which he always tries to read "in one go when I'm not going to be disturbed" because "all of your decisions about the character and how you play him will go back to that moment."

"Big Fish" appealed to McGregor because visual stylist Burton was attached to direct it. I could see the kind of magic that Tim Burton's brushstrokes would make on it, you know," he says, his thick Scottish brogue clipping the end of the vowel. "I quite liked toying with the idea that my side of the story was not fantasy, but it's slightly fantastical. There's something slightly larger than life about it." McGregor also found it "a treat" to work with Finney. "He's such a peaceful man," he says. "I like him very much." As in "Star Wars," in which he shares the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, previously portrayed by Alec Guinness, here McGregor and Finney are playing the same character at different stages of his life. While McGregor inhabited the Jedi Knight by studying his predecessor -- the way he walked, the way he talked -- on "Big Fish" he attirbutes the uncanny resemblance to their already "very similar laugh" and their dialect coach Carla Meyer, who helped them both with the Alabaman accent. "I think a lot of the work was done right there," he says. "She gave us the same voice, if you like." And then there are the pictures. "They were on Tim's desk when I met him for the first time, but they were facing him, so I was looking at these pictures upside down," McGregor recalls. "I was looking at a picture of myself going, 'I don't remember that picture.' And I turned it 'round, and it was Albert [at my age]. It's really spooky."

But the film perhaps most resonated with McGregor's shared affection for storytelling with the main character. "I think [storytelling] really is what we're about," he says. "And the more I go on, the more I like the idea that that's my job, to be a storyteller, you know. I like it so much more than the idea of being famous or the idea of being a celebrity. Not that that doesn't have its good sides or its bad sides, but the idea of being a storyteller is really so much nicer, ' When I grow up, I want to be a storyteller' is so much more valid than 'When I grow up I want to be famous.' "And it becomes simpler," he continues. "With your work, it's quite at the core of it all. How does this moment I'm about to do help tell the story? It's my job is ultimitely what it comes down to, you know. It keeps it very simple in that way and very enjoyable." McGregor, also like Bloom, fell in love with his wife, French production designer Eve Mavrakis at first sight when they worked together on a British TV show. They have two daughters: Clara Mathilde, almost eight, and Esther Rose, two. Storytelling has become a part of his personal life as well as professional. "I'm a parent now," he says. "Most evenings I read stories to my kids. It's something I've grown to really love, that half an hour lying next to my children telling them a story. It's a really nice part of the day. It's maybe the nicest part of the day."

McGregor chuckles in spite of himself here, perhaps because his reputation as a bloke's bloke -- a drinker and partyer -- leaves little room for this kind of unexpected domestic bliss. Remaining close to his family is imperative now, and they travel with him when he shoots on location. Clara enrolled in a local school in Montgomery during "Big Fish." He's been reading "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket with Clara for the last either months, he estimates. "We're up to the sixth book," he says. "F**king brilliant books. They're quite wonderful read. They read aloud very nicely. There's another popular series of children's books about a wizard that don't read too well. But I find that [the Lemony Snicket books] read really well. I'm very jealous. I believe they're making movies of them, and I don't think I'm in them." It's for his kids, too, partly, that McGregor is happy to have done "Star Wars." "I know there's been lots of negative slights put on things I've said about "Star Wars," says McGregor, whose uncle Denis Lawson played Lt. Wedge Antilles in the original trilogy. "I will always maintain that they're very, very difficult to make. It's just the truth. I'm not going to lie about it. They're technically very difficult and frustrating for actors becasue there's so much green screen, and so much of it isn't there, and it's very difficult for us to do. But I'm very, very glad to have been in them, and I really mean that. I'm delighted to be in the 'Star Wars' films. I play Obi-Wan Kenobi and I'm really [thrilled] about that, you know. For my kids and for my children's generation, that's top." That, and, as he has quipped in the past, "When someone says, 'Do you want to be in a new "Star Wars" movie?' it would take a bigger man than me to say no." The ponds don't get any bigger than "Star Wars."

 

"Big Fish." Starring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup and Jessica Lange. Directed by Tim Burton, Written by John August. Produced by Richard Zanuck, Bruce Cohen and Dan Jinks. A columbia release. Drama/comedy. Opens 12/10.