McGregor's Edge U.S weekly Jan 2002

Whether it's racing motorcycles or singing onscreen, the Scottish actor never hesitates to take a risk- except when it comes to his wife and two daughters. Ewan McGregor may never have given birth, but he knows what it's like to be pregnant. Or so he claims. Last fall, when he and his wife, production designer Eve Mavrakis, were expecting their second daughter, McGregor experienced mood swings, sudden cravings and the surest of all signs of a sympathetic pregnancy: "I got a little belly," he says laughing.

On a brisk Los Angeles morning, McGregor, 30 is in a cheerful mood. It's several weeks after the baby's birth- Esther was born in November- and he lifts up his shirt playfully, showing that his figure is back to normal. It turns out that fatherhood -even second time around- hasn't altered his lifestyle in the least. The dashing Scotsman, who received a Golden Globe best-actor nomination for Moulin Rouge and is now starring in the gritty war drama Black Hawk Down, still rides motorcycles, smokes Lucky Strikes and punctuates his conversation with words like bastard, buggered and bollocks. "I have a fund life," he says. "and I believe in enjoying it." McGregor's enthusiasm is infectious-whether he's playing guitar at his London home for his wife and their older daughter, 5-year-old- Clara ("We just make stuff up as we go along," he says), or goofing around while on location.

"He had me over to his hotel room, and he was doing this Elvis-type thing," says his Black Hawk Down costar Tom Sizemore. "And I could'nt believe it was him. The guy can really, really sing." McGregor also showed off his voice duetting with Nicole Kidman in last years Moulin Rouge-his recording of "Come What May" was nominated for a Golden Globe for best original song and became a top-10 single in Australia. The opportunity to cut loose in the dizzying musical spectacle was "just the thing of dreams," he says. "It was like walking into one of my fantasies as a kid."

The younger of two boys raised in Crieff, a rural town on the edge of the Scottish Highlands, by his mother, Carol McGregor, a homemaker, and his father, James McGregor, a career coounselor, Ewan had two passions as a child: roaming the countryside on his bicycle and watching black and white movies on television. He caught the acting bug from his uncle Dennis Lawson, the star of the British film Local Hero, and at 16, he presuaded his more practical minded parents to let him quite school ("They could tell I wasn't very happy") and move to London to try to make it as an actor.

Since his breakthrough in 1996's Trainspotting, he has landed a steady stream of roles, from punk-rock singer to stockbroker to Jedi Knight. Fearing the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in 1999's Star Wars Episode 1- The Phantom Menace would torpedo McGregor's career, Uncle Denis-who played a fighter pilot in all three of the original Star Wars movies- was less than encouraging when McGregor was vying for the part. "He told me not to do it because it wasn't serious acting." Says McGregor. "He wanted me to have a career after I was 30." But Lawson's concerns have proved unfounded.

Not only does McGregor have his own production company in London with pals Jude Law (his former roomate), Sadie Frost(Law's wife), Jonny Lee Miller and Sean Pertwee, but he also now has his pick of Hollywood projects. "He really can do just about anything," says Black Hawk Down producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who cast McGregor as an American soldier. "He's smart. He becomes the character." Though he is now a darling of Hollywood, that doesn't mean he want's to live there. His devotion to his family has him returning to London as often as he can. "Although nothing has changed in my passion for being an actor," he says, "now more than ever, I just want to be at home."

It was "love at first sight" with Mavrakis, 36, whom he met in 1994 on the set of the British tv show Kavanagh Q.C. They married and started a family less than a year later- and if it were up to him, the more children, the better. "I'd like to just be surrounded by them, really. Lots of wee girls around and my wife," he says. Ever the adventurer, McGregor, who romped with polar bears in the Canadian wilderness and hiked through a jungle in Honduras for a pair of British tv documentaries last year, next plans to dive beneath the polar ice cap in search of beluga whales and walruses just for the hell of it.

"In Honduras we had a three-day, ball-breaking hike, and a lot of the things that were troubling me, I decided to leave there," he says. "So if you're every in the Honduras jungle and you find a bunch of problems lying around they're mine. And you're welcome to all of them!"