"F*** me!" exclaims the barman. "Is that whatsisname over there? 'Im from Trainspotting? Ewan McGregor?" Indeed it is. One and the same. "I thought it was 'im. Then I thought, 'Nah. Can't be 'im. He looks like Ewan McGregor. But he don't look like no movie star." Which is, of course, one of the reasons why we reckon Ewan McGregor is the kind of movie star it's ok to like. A lot. He's a movie star, sure enough, but he doesn't ponce about like the rest of them. He's a movie star only in the sense that he's famous for making movies. Ewan McGregor makes movies like most of us make journeys to the local video store to rent vidoes of movies starring Ewan McGregor. That is to say, he makes a lot of movies. And he makes the making of movies look piss easy. Also, at least most of the time, he makes good movies. Cool movies. More reasons to like him. For the past six years McGregor has in his own words, "worked his tits off". Movie after movie, plum role after plum role- he's barely had time to scratch his arse. Unless, that is, the script called for it.

"For the past few years I've more or less been making movies back-to-back," he says. "There was one time when I only had an 11-hour break between finishing one and starting another. Which , of course is every actor's dream. People would say to me, 'How are you dealing with it all?' And I'd say, 'Well, there's nothing to deal with. I'm just getting on with it.' It was only when it stopped for a month that I had time to take stock. This summer, I had a month off. The main thing I realised was that I wasn't getting any time for doing the things I wanted to do. "The biggest thing was being able to spend some time with my wife and daughter. There was a large chunk of time when I'd be so busy that I'd only see my daughter when she was asleep. So, at least for a few weeks, I could be a proper daddy. Also, having a few weeks off meant that I could do things I'd wanted to do for ages. Like watching football. I went to a few World Cup games, including the Final itself. And I got the chance to ride around on my bike just thinking about the bike and the road. Not a thought for films. Then, just as I'm getting used to that kind of life, it's back to working my tits off. Which I'm not complaining about cos I f*** love the job." The job, as he explains it involves "pretending to be other people, nothing more complicated than that."

This year he's been pretending to be a bisexual glam-rock star (for Velvet Goldmine) and the young Obi-Wan Kenobi (for Balance Of The Force - the first of the much-touted Star Wars prequels). Of the two, Velvet Goldmine was by far the hardest to film, reckons McGregor. "For a start, in Goldmine I had to shag a bloke- which I didn't have to do in the Star Wars thing. I had to roger Christian Bale. Or, at least I had to pretend that I was rogering him. We did the scene on a rooftop and the crew were on another because they wanted a long lens on it. So we started off nice and gentle and I've got the long wig on, tossing my hair about a bit. Then I got a bit faster. And it went on and on. I mean, I'm f*** exhausted at this point. So I leaned over and whispered into Christian's ear, 'Christ, I would have come by now if we were doing it for real'. Then I looked around and the camera had been packed away. Maybe they thought we were enjoying ourselves. "Then there was the problem of losing weight for it. I had to wear leather hipsters and no shirt. So, if I'd been a bit chubby around the midriff, I'd have looked like a right c***. Of course I had to go thorugh all that for Trainspotting. Fat junkies just don't work."

Not that the last 12 months has been without it's setbacks for the man recently described as "Sotland's Brad Pitt." Not least, there was the public indignity of being displaced in favour of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach - the Trainspotting team's adaptation of Alex Garland's bestselling novel. A turn of events which clearly still gets him bristled up a treat. "Of course," he says, "It hurt a great deal. Particularly because I want to be Danny Boyle's actor. I got told it was to do with budget and they got the money they wanted with him in the role. I can't pretend it didn't knock me back. I was f*** gutted actually. And it shook my confidence I can tell you. Not that I'm jealous of DiCaprio. I mean, you get two very different films if you have him or you have me. I just wish they'd been honest and told me they were considering other actors. But maybe I shouldn't complain. I've had a f*** great run and I was bound to get a setback sooner or later."

Famously, he got his first break while still at drama school- taking the role of a malcontent army recruit in Dennis Potter's Lipstick On Your Collar TV series. This was followed by leads in Shallow Grave, Blue Juice, and the BBC costume drama Scarlet and Black, by which time he'd demonstrated a rare ability to reinvent himself with each new role. Then came Trainspotting and things went stellar. "I suppose there was a point when I realised I was quite famous," he says. "Not that fame means anything to me really, apart from having the freedom to do the sort of work I enjoy doing. There's many aspects of fame that I despise. This idea that there's a kind of famous club. This notion that, as soon as you make it in some way, you become friends with other famous people. There's a lot of that in LA. I'll be out there and my agent will ring up and say, 'So and so's agent has been on the phone and so and so would like to go out for a drink with you tonight. I couldn't be less interested. I mean if Jack Arse from Arseville phoned me up and asked me out for a pint, I wouldn't be interested either. "it's this sort of attitude that gets me pegged as a bit of an awkward bugger. But I'm not trying to be rebellious. I've just got no interest in being a member of any club. And if I need to, I'll speak my mind. I remember being part of an awards ceremony at the Scottish People's Film Festival."

"They showed a clip of Trainspotting, but beeped out all the f-words. So when I went up to collect my award, I said: "For those of you who didn't get it, the missing words were "fuck." "Fucking." and "Fucked.". Afterwards, this bloke comes up to me and says, ' You're a bloody disgrace, laddie.' So I told him to f** off. And he did. See, I don't like any of that nonsense. I just won't stand for it." Next up? A return to the stage is a serious option. More films, of course- inluding starring roles in Rogue Trader (as Barings banker Nick Leeson) and Nora (as James Joyce).

Next year his production company, Natural Nylon, will be starting work on The Hellfire Club, a tale of rampant debauchery amongst the 18th-century off set. Then there's the trifling matter of the new Star Wars movie to come. "As soon as I started acting professionally," he says, "it felt like my life had gone into widescreen. That's how it's been ever since. With Star Wars, I suppose it's about to go into Super 70mm. But my feelings about it are still the same. It's a different part, a different character and until it comes out I never know whether I've pulled it off. That's always exciting and also incredibly scary. The difference with Star Wars is that it's a bit of cinema history. Which means that if I'm bad, I'll have blown it big-time." Slight pause. A quick sup on his pint. Then the grin. A glint of supernatural confidence. Suggesting, just for a moment that there's a part of McGregor just a small part that believes he's really as good as the rest of us reckon him to be.

"Of course, " he says, "There's a chance it could all go bellyup . But that's not going to happen."