In this month's Moulin Rouge, our favorite junie-turned Jedi paints Paris red, seduces Nicole Kidman, and even gets to sing...again. But has fame changed Ewan McGregor?

Ewan McGregor is performing. Not in front of 400 dancing extras for Moulin Rouge, or an imaginary cast on a Star Wars soundstae, or even an audience of self-concious theatregoers in Hampstead; this is private performance for the five occupants of an elevator in London's Dorchester Hotel. And if you look at him sideways, squint a bit and imagine the mullet, when he hits the high notes on "Look at me I'm Sandra Dee" you 'll know exactly who stood in for Olivia Newton-John in the Scottish, teenage version of Grease.

Invited to an exclusive club early in the century for a shoot involving scarlet drapes and a circle of twisted lightbulbs, Ewan could be giving us an impromptu curtain-raiser for his latest film, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, a hyperactive reimagining of the famous Montmarte club in which he stars with Nicole Kidman, Wearing a red and gold-striped shirt he gratefully sheds afterwards, he nods towards the lights behind him and asks: "Do you want me back there in the ring..." and, as the double-entendre dawns, "or shall I just peep through your curtains?

"Oh God, " shrieks his publicist "It's like being with Sid James!" And there it is: the uncontrollable grin, the one you recognise like a face at the airport: Renton, in a Park Lane hotel. Five years after tearing throught the streets of Edinburgh for Trainspotting in a metaphorical dash through the lower echelons of stardom, Ewan McGregor is not the same easygoing, perpetually trashed, Oasis fan you used to find slagging off Will SMith to journalists in the pub. He's still ordinary (on the phone to his mum between interviews), and not above self-parody (They're making Spider-Man. I didn't get the part, he jokes. "They cast some big-name American actor"), but this morning he's also flanked by PR's and his personal publicist is posted beside the croissants. He may not have heard of Tobey Maguire-just as he once referred to Cameron Diaz, his co-star in A Life Less Ordinary as "Caron something-or-other:-but that's part of his appeal: his uncultivate indifference to the industry that has made him a star.

"There are actors who are only interested in being famous," he says of his impatience with Hollywood," and I've worked with some of them. And then there are actors who really care about their work and are driven by the need to push back the boundaries. And one is very satisfying and the other is meaningless. It's like chasing your tail. You'll never be famous enough because there's nothing at the end of it, it doesn't lead to anything."

But make no mistake, our Ewan has no objection to stardom. Being a star means being allowed to wave lightsabers, machine guns, and your penis in front of the paying public and not sacrifice your integrity (or be locked up). It means realising the kind of preposterous ambitions most people abandon at puberty-to be a part of the mythmaking Star Wars series, to dodge grenades in war movie (Ridley Scott's forthcoming Black Hawk Down), to be Iggy Pop (In Velvet Goldmine) live in concert.

"I remember walking on stage when we were doing the Hindi spectacular at the end of Moulin Rouge," he tells me, "and I came on set and there were about 300 extras and 100 dancers and this enormous stage built up into the middle distance. And with all the music it just reminded me of my fantasies of filmmaking, It just felt like the real thing."

The film, however, is far from the real thing. A love story located in Luhrmann's intertextual, hallucinogenic world, Moulin Rouge conveys the essence of the belle epoque, but is about as historically faithful as Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor. Except, that's the point. The last in his trilogy of Red Curtain films- after Strictly Ballroom and Romeo+Juliet-Luhrmann uses a combination of pop-cultural references and sung dialogue as a storytelling device, meaning Ewan's Bohemian poet romances Kidman's high-class harlot with the unlikely aid of some Elton John lyrics. It's a part he wanted so much that not honly did he audition, alonside the likes of Heath Ledger, but he agreed to worke for scale, Obi-Wan Kenobi on minimum wage.

"I don't audition much any more. So that was a novelty." He laughs at how pretentious this sounds. "When I auditioned for Romeo+Juliet, Baz and I spent about two hours working on some texts from Shakespeare and he remembered that. So it was probably as responsible for me getting Moulin Rouge as my audition. I was doing the play [ Little Malcom And The Struggle Against The Eunuchs, directed by his uncle, former X-wing fighter pilot Denis Lawson] , so Baz came to see it and we spent about an hour or so talking, and me singing as best I could. I had a polyp on my vocal chords at the time, but I think he kinda gleanded that I could sing."

"He hadn't seen you singing in Velvet Goldmine presumable," I venture in an attempt at irony, recalling the spectacularly bad recording session Ewan has in that film. "I don't know, but I'm not sure that would be a great gauge at how musical I was anyway." Attempt at irony fails.



Other than singing lessons and writing "shite" poetry in his trailer as typing practice, Ewan's only other preparation for the role of romantic hero Christian was a bit of period research: "There was a great book about the whores, written at the time, in which each chapter was a two-or three- page description of one of htem. A catalouge of whores, with references to teeth, boobs, bums, breath and their preferences. No prices."

We wrap up in the hotel's ostentatious 22-bedroom penthouse, where Liz Taylor has had her hair coiffed and the carpet bristles with 18-carat gold dust, but which hasn't attracted any guests willing to foot the 11,000 pound a night tariff. "Eleven thousand a night..." Ewan mutters, "I'd pay 11,000 not to be in there for another minute." It's a revealing aside, and the first indication that something has shifted in the McGregor psyche since he signed on for stardom. Because no matter how good-humoured they strain to appear, how happy to buy the round and look you in the eye in interviews, something happens to actors who are part of the Hollywood resistance when they do multi-million-dollar blockbusters. In Ewan's case it's as though he's developed a kind of terminal discretion. Whereas before he might have waved his pint about and demanded that the case of Independance Day have their Equity cards removed, he's now so cautious about voicing his opinions he's in danger of appearing not to have any.

He admits to not liking The Beach, which would have been his fourth film with the team that made Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and A Life Less Ordinary (Boyle, McDonald and Hodges), but abruptly dismisses the subject of Leonardo DiCaprio's casting in the role intended for him: "It's got nothing to do with me."

It's a classic example of the McGregor charm, reserving his opinions for his own work, which he prefers not to measure angainsat anyone else's, except maybe Steve McQueen. "I don't have any competition. Not because I'm above it, but because it's not a competition."

In the case of Star Wars Episode Two, the most revealing comment he'll make about the script is to say it's "better", before launching into an account of his personal difficulties filming without co-stars. "It's very, very hard, " he frowns, staring at his Marlboros for a long time. "Because you're doing a job that's not really the job of an actor. You're acting and reacting with things that aren't there… and I don't understand how you do that. But it was interesting going back to do something, to play him {Obi-Wan} a bit older and be in charge this time. Even though it's a very technical film, there was good stuff to play around with." Pherhaps one of Ewan's most remarkable achievements is his claim to the title 'Coolest British Movie Star.' Remarkable because it's an accolade measured as much in tabloid column inches as in talent.

And not only is his lifestyle more about raising babies than raising hell, but the outstanding features of his "misspent" youth do not add up to much street cred either. He's never done drugs, doesn't really like clubbing, studied the French horn in school, masturbated over Madonna calendars and in more than six years of high-profile star turns, he's clocked up one happy marriage (to a non-famous person), one-and-a-half kids and not a single line of really bad press. But despite the fact that the press loves Ewan, forgiving him his bad haircuts and the odd inexplicable film choice, he does not love the press. "I'll never understand why there are magazines dedicated to pictures that have been taken of people without their knowledge or consent. It shouldn't be legal. I don't want to see pictures of me flying kites with my daughter- it's f**** no one's buisness. That's my own time." This is a scathing reproach coming from the New Ewan. Even when asked what his reasons are for refusing to do Titanic-sized blockbusters, all he says is "I just couldn't be bothered," and then rushes to the defence of anyone he may inadvertently offend. "I don't think it bears any reflection on the actors.

Because our choices shouldn't be held against us. We make films and we make big ones and small ones and it doesn't matter. The idea of Titanic just wouldn't appeal to me…though if they'd asked me to do it, I might have done it too, but I wouldn't want to be held responsible for it. Bruckheimer is responsible for Pearl Harbor…I've just made a film for him [Black Hawk Down] but I made a film with Ridley Scott directing and it was about the Americans in Somalia in '93 and there's no love story, there's nothing but the truth in the film we made." To be sure, if Ewan ever felt pressured to accept a part for career reasons, those days are over." If I've made those decisions in the past they've turned out to be the best things I've done. So, now I just pick things if they appeal to my gut instinct."

And, casting off the mantle of the self-effacing young star-trying desperately to please, doing short films for friends, making airline safety announcements-he reels off a large chunk of his filmography by way of example. "I love my work in the Pillow Book, and I love my work in Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Brassed Off is a film I'm hugely proud of. I like the part I play in Little Voice…Velvet Goldmine was a blast and I'm pleased with the stuff in that.

Em…Nora, I almost said Emma…" he laughs. "I didn't like me in Emma," he goes on to explain. "Emma was a fine move. I just think I'm pants in it really." And with that flash of humility, a glimpse of the old Ewan: the RADA-rejected kid from Crieff who, not content to sing, dance and use the Force, is coming home to do a movie that is 'all about acting.' "It reminds me of Trainspotting in that it's got buckets to play as an actor. It's called Young Adam and it's the screenplay of a novel by the Beat writer Alexander Trocchi, who was a pornographer and a heroin addict. It's a very dark, erotic book and I just can't wait to do something a bit small and tasty." A small debut film by a Scottish director sounds like a return to form, but even as he enthuses over it's arthouse potential, it's clear it'll be followed by some larger-than-life screen incarnation of another McGregor fantasy. He even knows which one.

"A bike movie," he says, "That'd be good."