Down with Love!
CN 2003
by Reese Esposito

Next month Down with Love, a film that pays tribute to the Doris Day-Rock Hudson cmedies of the fifities opens for general release. We meet one of its starts, Ewan McGregor.

How did you get involved with 'Down with Love' and were you familiar with these movies before this?
When I was a kid, I was much more interested in watching old movies on the television than children's television, from as early
as I can remember. So, I can only assume that these sixities sex comedies were seen then because when I read the script, it was
quite an interesting time. I seem to remember that it was just after the Globes and I'd been in L.A. and I came back with like five or six scripts and they were all going at the same time, and I was in a real f***ing buzz about things, and I felt like this as an important decision and they were all very different and I read this one and I guess that I immediately got it. I didn't question it, and people at the studio didn't necessarily even get it, some of them, people incredibly high up the ladder even didn't get it initially, and you know, I didn't even quesiton it because I was so familiar with that style of film and then, when Peyton Reed came over and brought a bunch of them to watch, I seemd to have seen them all.

Do you have a favorite of them?
No, Well, I like different bits from all of them. They sometimes don't end as well as ours does, and in fact, many of them just end very abruptly and what seems to be fantastic about them is some of the bits in them. There's a great scene in one of the ones, I forget the title of it, with Tony Randall being incredibly drunk in a bar with Rock Hudson and they're both having independent discussions, independent conversations. It's very clever writing, each line kind of answers the other, but they're actually only talking to themselves.

You don't exactly have a Rock Hudson sensibility about you.
How dare you, yes I do. [Laughs] What do you mean?

He was a pretty boy, and you're known for doing dark edgy things.
Yeah well, it was a very different ear then. It was probably far easier to get stuck than it is now. I assume, I don't know, but I can imagine that there was probably more pressure to keep doing the same kind of thing then, than there is now.

Did you have a desire to do something more fun and light?
I've always kind of mixed it up; there have always been funny films amongst the stuff. A Life Less Ordinary wasn't very dark, and there was a film I made called Blue Juice which certainly wasn't very dark at all and we had a hell of a good time making it, but I've never flet that I'm only a dark edgy actor. I'm drawn to playing all different kinds of things, and this was really challenging because I knew what it was, and I thought that it would be interesting to try and do it now, not to make a two thousand and three version of that, but to make a sixties sex comedy which is essentially what we tried to do.

But as a singer, have you thought about making an album?
I'll make one for you.

Are you signed for another musical?
No, no. I haven't. I certainly felt that after Moulin Rouge that you have to look after it, and that for me to rush into another musical would be a silly idea, and I would want to protect Moulin Rouge for a good, long while and I think that it would take an extraordinarily good script to cap that in my view.

But you sang for this?
Yeah, for the end, but this was by no means a musical.

Are there any old ones that you'd like to redo?
No, I mean, I think that waht's important is what we did with Moulin Rouge. To use music to tell a great story, an old story, and a story that we all know. That, to me, was more challenging than filming a musical that we already know, I think. I don't know but there may be a new one to come along. Certainly with Chicago and Moulin Rouge, it's opened the door to that possibility now, but we'll have to see.

Who was more fun to do the duet with Nicole Kidman or Renee?
I'm not going to answer a question like that. That's a terrible question to ask and not one that I would ever deign to answer and I'll tell you why. It's because I wouldn't know the answer to the question because I'm not on set going, 'Oh, well, Nicole was much more fun that this,' do you know what I mean? That's not how I am. I'm not like that. I'm making one filme with one and one film with another.

I think that people wonder how it's possible to be going all over the world making movies and still have a successful marriage?
Because I'm in love with my wife and I work with my fellow actors and actresses.

What about the whole idea of being a public person, and people link you with other actors, the tabloids?
They don't write very many about me particularly.

I read a quote that you stopped drinking and calmed down.
It's true. I mean. I'm thirty-two. I'm no longer twenty-five and haring around. I'm a husband and I have two beautiful children and I think that in thenormal and usual progression of all of us that becomes more important to me every single day of my life, that I no longer find happiness with strangers in pubs. I find happiness at home with my wife and kids.

Weren't those the days?
No, I think that they seem to be, but no. I don't think that they were. So, I thik that's certainly they way thatmy life has gone. I mean, I work now, and I want to go home and see what's going on there, and I always travel with my family as best I can. So, they spent the whole entire time with me in Alabama and my daughter went to school in Alabama.

So have you ever been Down on Love?
No, it's not always gone smooth, but I've never been down on it where I haven't believed in it or chose not to believe in it.

Do you feel you're like Catcher Block in any way?
I look quite like him [Laughs], but I don't know. No, he's very much from that time. I thinkt hat his attitude towards women, I think, to begin with was quite awkward to play because you just don't get away with that, and it's not the way we are anymore, and it took some adjusting back in time, if you like, to be able to find fun in playing that stuff which I did, at the end of the day.

Down with Love is scheduled for general release on October 3rd.