On his first day in Morocco shooting the Ridley Scott war movie Black Hawk Down, Ewan McGregor steps from the airport terminal into one of the battered Mercedes Grands that pass for taxis in the ancient port city of Rabat. He strikes up a conversation. "I was here before," the 29-yr old actor says in his soft burr. "But I can't remember the name of the hotel." Trying to get his bearings, he describes the place to the driver. "Ah. The Tour Hassan?" the cabbie suggests, citing Rabat's most famous landmark, an elaborately carved twelfth-century minaret. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," McGregor says enthusiastically. "That was it." "It's now called the Meridien," the driver says proudly. McGregor laughs. "So," he says. "There you go." A lot has changed since 1993. Last time around, McGregor was shooting his first movie, Being Human, and obscure nonentity in which his character was referred to as English Acting extra. "Which pissed me off, " he says. "on two counts." One: He is not English- he is Scottish. Two: He was not an extra-he had one line of dialogue, thank you very much. It didn't take long for McGregor's career to shed the English Extra stigma. He won a starring part in Shallow Grave, the exceedingly dark 1994 breakthrough by the then equally unknown director Danny Boyle.

Then came Boyle's charismatic junkie classic Trainspotting; driven by McGregor's widly adolescent vivacity-a quality that makrs him offscreen as well-and it made him a star. Along the way, there have been artful indies like Brassed Off and Little Voice, and a few turkeys, notably the ludicrous horror movie Nightwatch and the British surf movie-as if- Blue Juice. And then there was that other obscure nonentity, Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, with its piddling $922.6 million in international receipts. Now, eight years and eighteen movies later, McGregor is back where he started. The city looks cleaner, he notes. There are fewer beggars on the streets. Last time he was out this way, they kept him here a whole month to deliver one line. "Those were the days," he says, rubbing the sunburn on the back of his neck. They're getting more out of you this time, then? "Just a bit," he says. These days, McGregor upgrades to a palatial suite in the Rabat Hilton. On the bookshelves, he's built a small shrine with toy soldiers and brass bullet casings. Behind it sits a small framed document that reads: "A Certification of Appreciation for you dedicated commitement to Ranger orientation…?" McGregor picks it off the shelf. "I'm proud of that." He says.

Down is based on the true story of a humanitarian 1993 U.S. Ranger mission to capture a Somali warlord. The plan was to airlift a hundred elite soldiers into battle and bring them back within an hour. Instead, a rocket-propelled grenade downed a helicopter, and a regiment was stranded overnight. Eighteen soldiers were killed and more than 500 Somalis lost their lives. For authenticity's sake, the cast had to complete a grueling week of genuine boot camp in Georgia that included shaved heads and a rigorous schedule of wind sprints, assault courses, and weapons and combat training. "I was," says McGregor with a smidgen of pride, "fitter than I had imagined I would be." He also discovered he was a pretty fair shot. "Lying down, from 50 feet, I was perfect. So I could really kill someone," he grins."Which is always good to know." McGregor has become obsessed with warfare.

On the coffee table in his suite lies a copy of Frederic Manning's The Middle Parts of Fortune, an excruciating eye-witness account of World War I trench conflict. At night he has crazy dreams, always about the military, full of weaponry and camouflage and people giving orders. He takes out a Zippo lighter inscribe Anaconda and lights one of his ever-present Marlboros. "I'd always wanted to do a war film," he confesses. "Just purely for the wee boy in me who used to play soldiers. And it's a lot like that, you know?"

Last night his agent phoned. He was singing. The agent had just seen a preview of Moulin Rouge, McGregor's latest movie. The actor takes this as a good omen, as he hasn't seen the thing himself. Rouge, a love story set in a turn-of-the-century Paris nightclub, is from the strobe-lit mind of Baz Luhrmann, director of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet. It's a colorfully extravagant musical in which McGregor plays a lovelorn poet. For a man so captivated by heavy artillery, he can certainly carry a tune. "I didn't have to convince him to take the role," Luhrmann says. "He ran toward it. He gets to sing and dance…and he gets to kiss Nicole Kidman." Rouge was originally scheduled for release last Christmas. Then it was bumped ahed to May. This is standard operating procedure in the world of film releases, but this was not a standard movie cast. Halfway through filming, McGregor's comely co-star separated from her husband.

Rumors began to flow that the movie was delayed because Kdman didn't want to do interviews while her split with Tom Cruise was breaking news. McGregor shakes his head and makes a face. "The delays were purely due to the huge taks of putting all the music together, "he says. Were you aware of the situation between them? "No, absolutely not. I had no idea. No idea. And I haven't spoken to her since so I don't know anything about it. It wasn't anything to do with me thought." Which brings me to my next question. "I didn't have an affair with Nicole Kidman. No." He starts laughing. "It was nothing to do with me." Nicole, says McGregor, was 'a real poppet.' "And I think we got a really nice relationship, we really did." He adds hurriedly, "On film, you know?"

"Ewan," Luhrmann expounds, "is genetically built to be a romantic hero. But we've never seen him this way. I don't guarantee anyone's experience of something I've made, but I can guarantee that he'll be a revelation to the audience." McGregor, as we mentioned, plays a young bourgeios who's dying to throw himself into bohemia. In doing so, he falls in love with the most beautiful and unattainable woman, a rich man's courtesan. "I used to say she was a skanky whore, which really pissed her off," McGregor says of Kidman. "But, yes. She plays a courtesan. A high-class whore. A high-class skanky whore," he adds, relishing the phrase. Kidman admits she didn't take the compliment: "I'd say, 'You're meant to be in love with me! You cannot refer to me as a skanky old whore!' And he'd go, 'Oh yeah….sorry.'" There was a great book written that just described all the whores in the Moulin Rouge," says McGregor. "It's bizarre: really detailed descriptions of each whore. 'Good teeth.' Or, 'Cracking tits.' Great arse but terrible breath." Do any of these endearments fit Nicole? "No, She was divine. There was no problem with her teeth or her tits."

Moulin Rouge is indeed a musical. McGregor and Kidman sing throughout the film-not nineteenth-century classics but modern pop songs: Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and Elton John's "Your Song." The soundtrack also includes a cover of "Lady Marmalade" produced by Missy Elliot, and contributions from Fatboy Slim, Beck, and that showboat of fin de siecle Paris…Ozzy Osbourne. McGregor had a ball recording his songs. "I have a bit of pash for the old musicals," he says. In fact, he set his heart on acting at the age of 14, partly inspired by this nascent love. As a boy, he studied French horn and drummed in a local rock band. He plays guitar. Propped up on his bookshelf is a copy of Instant Five-String Banjo. "It's a nightmare," he complains of the instrument he taught himself while filming Black Hawk Down. "Really hard work." Despite his difficulty with banjo, there's talk that McGregor's vocal work may be rewarded with a record deal from Interscope.

"He's got such a beautiful voice," Kidman says. "I must have heard him sing 'You Song' 600 times, and I still go, 'Wow'. I mean, he can hit highC!" McGregor is cagey about his future as a rock star. Baz Luhrmann, on the other hand, says the actor is up there with Bono. "My God!" McGregor says, genuinely shocked "That's quite a quote!" Next to the banjo text are about twenty books, including a novel by A.S Byatt and several collections by Chekhov. As a teenager growing up in Scotland, McGregor never liked reading: It's a passion he developed in his twenties. Of course he immersed himself in Rimbaud and Verlaine for the part. Blank look, "Who?" Long, deadpan pause. He laughs. Then: "I do write a wee bit of poetry now and then. I had a typewriter to practice for the movie in my trailer. So I wrote a lot of nonsense. They're in a book in my house. And there they will remain." So there will be no Thoughts from Moulin Rouge by Ewan McGregor? "A book of shite," he muses with a wince. "No." McGregor spent a lot of last year in Australia. He bought a Harley-Davidson and a tent.

When he had down time, he camped in the outback, falling asleep by his fire and waking up at five in the morning, gazing up at the stars. In Sydney, McGregor completed work on Episode II. Being a widget in George Lucas' money-spinner means your also custodian of the master's secrets. You're forbidden to discuss anything. "It's kind of flavored everything I do," McGregor says uncomfortably. "When I do interviews, I always worry now." I ask whether he got more lines in Episode II than he had in the first one. "You sound like my Dad now. He always gets worried about how many lines I've got. 'Are you in it a lot, son?' Are you on every page?' I'm in a lot of it, yeah." So we can expect a new McGregor action figure. "I would assume so. But I know nothing about that side of it. I really don't. You go in there, do your bit, and see the toys later. You know you get scanned now? So maybe by the third one, I won't need to be there…" He pauses for a moment. "Hope I still get the check though." It's nine in the evening at McGregor's hilton suite. A chambermaid arrives with an espresso. Later we'll head to the bar, where McGregor will stick to soft drinks. The heady days when he'd out-drink journalists are over. He's decided to calm down.

There was one recent evening that involved dangerously large quantities of absinthe, but that was principally in the name of research. "It's wicked stuff, I assure you," he says. "I couldn't see properly the next day. My vision was like…" he waves his hands in front of his face. "It's madness." "Et voila," says the sober Scot to the Moroccan maid. "I'd like a Coke as well. He's learning to play more and work less, too. Before Black Hawk Down, McGregor put his career on hold for six months to spend time with his wife of six years, Eve Mavrakis, a French production designer he met working on a British TV shoot, and their 5-yr-old daughter, Clara. McGregor recently set out to improve his French. He says he's tired of hearing his bilingual kid run rings around him. McGregor's also learning how to spend time by himself. "Since I've been here, I haven't been going mad. I haven't at all. And I've enjoyed it a lot. Reading and watching movies on my DVD player and dotting about on my own."

McGregor's newfound sobriety comes as a benchmark birthday looms. I remind him that he's turning 30 just two weeks from today. Frown. "I am, yeah." How's that going to feel? "I think it's good," he says after a pause. "There's a huge relief in turning 30. I think there's a craziness that I've got out of my system, you know?" He lights another Malboro. Down in the hotel lobby, he spots a 19-yr-old member of the crew wearing new Black Hawk Down dog tags. He yanks the boy's chain up and examines it eagerly. "Do I get one of those?" he pleads. It turns out he does. McGregor looks almost ridiculously happy at the prospect. "Cool."