So Ewan Again
Ms London April 2002

Ewan McGregor, star of Moulin Rouge and the forthcoming Star Wars, Episode II Attack of the Clones will also be the star this April of FilmFour's British Film Month. One ofBritain's most successful actors, FilmFour is screening an exclusive career interview with McGregor on the evenings of 13th and 14th of Apirl, discussing his rise to fame and his favourite roles. FilmFour is also showing an accompanying season of his work, all introduced by the actor himself. The season includes the iconic role that first brought McGregor to prominence; in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting he plays Mark Renton, an Edinburgh heroin junkie attempting to kick his habit, encouraged by his family but continually drawn to drugs by his friends.

Demonstrating his diversity as an actor, his next role was in Peter Greenway's The Pillow Book, a sensual and erotic tale full of gorgeous images and frames within frames, that marked a change of direction for McGregor, as did the subsequent Emma, an adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, with McGregor as the romantic charmer Frank Churchill. The FilmFour season also includes a nother collaboration with Danny Boyle in the tale of hapless kidnapper Robert Lewis in A Life Less Ordinary where he co-stars with Cameron Diaz. Finally, there's also a chance to see McGregor's performance as the great Irish writer James Joyce in Nora, which examines the early years of Joyce's life with his great love Nora Barnacle and is produced by the production company in which McGregor is a co-parnter Natural Nylon.

Where you popular at school?
No, I wasn't a geeky one, nor was I very into sport. I mean, I quite liked the drama of sport in that we had to play rugby and cricket and stuff and I became very good at diving the wrong way when a guy was running towards me. I just remember the fear of these guys with huge legs and the look of death in their face, running towards you, and you're supposed to wrap yourself round their running legs. F** that! I became very very good at looking like I'd misread where he was going and diving the wrong way. So my acting really began there. And I liked to play the part. I was the wicket-keeper for the cricket team and stuff until they realised, looking at the score card, that I let about 50 runs through. But I looked very good at it. And I think there's still something, well it's what actors do; we manage to look good at whatever it is. Without necessarily being good at something you can manufacture the look of being good at it.

Did you wanna be a rock star?
Yeah. I was a drummer and stuff, although music was always…Just to go back to the school thing, , I wanted to be very popular everywhere, so I made it my business to be in every clique, you know, to be accepted everywhere, and it was terribly important to me. I managed to make that work as well. Looked like the popular kid! And then the music thing was... That'' all I was really interested in at school was music and art. And those were the only things that kind of had much interest to me. I didn't get the rest. I didn't get the idea that what you're learning here might actually be helpful in later life. I didn't make the association that it was in any way worthwhile learning anything which is terrible. I wish I had. But I didn't and, in a way, music and art I suppose are both ways to express yourself. But at that time I wouldn't have known what 'express yourself' meant. It's just what fascinated me. And also it allowed me to perform I suppose. It allowed me musically to perform the French horn and I got to a level where I could play at school concerts. I could play two Mozart Concertos on the horn, so I would do that, and I was a drummer in the pipe band and in the school rock band, so I was able to perform there. And poetry readings and stuff like that. I'd always put myself up for those things. What pop stars did you like? Well it's difficult to remember. I was never a punk. I was never a mod. I was never… I missed out on all of that stuff happening. I mean, I missed out on everything it seems. When rave started coming in I missed that. I don't know where I was. I was always somewhere else. I used to spike my hair up to Billy Idol. Some mornings you'd get up and you couldn't be arsed to do it cos it took a while, so I'd stick on White Wedding and Rebel Yell, and by the end of those two tracks my hair would be up. He inspired my hair cut for years.

On Trainspotting:
There's a huge pressure that comes with success, especially with film-makers, I think. You know, the expectation of what the Shallow Grave team are gonna do next was enormous. And to then go and make Trainspotting, a film about heroin addicts, is an incredibly dangerous thing to do, and I think then after that to go and make and American romantic comedy is an even more dangerous thing to do. So I was just full of admiration for them as a team, you know, that they were talented, they had a vision, and that they weren't scared of taking enormous amounts of risks. I think we did a very very good job. And I was blown away by its success. I mean, I always thought it was going to be good. I knew it was too good a book, it was too good a script with too good a director, we had too good everything-too good a cast- for it not to really, really be fantastic. But what it did was beyond any of our expectations. Because it was enormous. It was everywhere in the world and against the odds really. Even in the States, when we started rehearsing Trainspotting we all said. "What aobut the accent? What about America?" And the producer said, "This film won't be seen in America, so f*** it. Don't worry about it." And we made it for ourselves and for Britain and then it did do huge stuff in America, by word of mouth. Right from the start. I flew up to Glasgow with Danny, and that night I think me and him went to a Calton Athletic Club meeting and I'd never been to a meeting like that before where the room was full of very hard-nosed, tattooed, Glasgow heroin addicts, talking to each other like brothers, talking to each other on a level I'd never heard men talk to each other on before. It was incredibly touching because it was ery heartfelt and they were absolutely helping each other out. And there was support I'd never seen before They have football teams and you know, during our rehearsals the whole cast would have five-a-side football games against the Calton Athletic Club who would run circles round us. They have fitness classes and all these different things that basically keep each other off drugs, and they were invaluable. We wouldn't have made the film we made without them. So, ultimately I think the job we did on Trainspotting was to show a vry true depiction of the misery and the downward spiral that heroin addiction, any addiction, entails. I think we showed it in a very vivid and lively and pleasing to the eye way. But regardless of that, that draws you in to get the message right? I don't' think we ever glamorised it.

On A Life Less Ordinary & Cameron Diaz:
We got on very well, and I think it's through rehearsing scenes. And it was so… It's a lovely opportunity in a film like that because you really are just playing against each other most of the time. I mean, you're always together and a lot of the humour… There were some hilarious moments. There's a great out-takes reel that they sent me afterwards that cheers me up on dark days when I put it on…And just hilarious moments, when I've started eating on the porch-he's made this effort to make this steak dinner and to make everything nice and he's got the table set up outside in the beautiful wilderness-and there's this moment of, like, me stuck with a bit of food hanging out of my mouth an dnot knowing it's there and us cracking up. When I open the door- oh God, I don't remember the name of the actor now- to the guy who lives up the hill who has to feed Felix and I open the door and he goes-cos I have to feed him, Felix, I have to feed him-and he's doing all this stuff and I could'nt keep a straight face, and then Cameron arrives naked behind me and there's take after take after take after take of me not being able to keep a straight face. In fact I'm sure in the movie you can see that I'm still not really bang on it, you know. Great fun stuff. Great memories of that.

On British Surfing Movie Blue Juice:
By the end of the first week we'd been in the water every day and I got this red thing in my nose. So I went to the doctor down there and he went, "It's a good job you came in cos by the end of the next week it would have been all over your face." It was a bacterial infection from the sea. I mean, the coastlines of Britain are in a state.

On Emma:
I did have the worst wig in the history of…like a Crystal Tip helmet. And it's funny cos you kind of look in the makeup mirror and you go, "Well, it must be alright on film because someone would say." Even though you're going-and it was a lesson learnt- you're going, "That looks f*** awful." But instead of saying that to somebody, "Doesn't this look awful?" you just assume that they know better than you because they're the wig people and the film guy and the guy on the camera who you might think would say something. But more than that it was my fault. The film is good and everyone's good in it and my only thing is I decided to do it because I should be seen to be doing something that's the polar opposite of Trainspotting.

On the Pillow Book:
My dad phoned up saying, "We're going, me and your Mum, are going to see The Pillow Book tonight in Edinburgh." And I said, "Oh, that's great!" He said, "Yeah, we're going with the farmer and his wife and some friends." And I suddenly thought, " I haven't told him. I haven't told him about the sex with a man." And suddenly he was going with a farmer and his wife! However, the next day I got this fax through saying, "Son, it was the most beautiful film. You were fantastic in the movie." And I thought that was just lovely; he'd seen it and got it. None of that wigged him out. And then at the end he said, "PS, I'm glad to see you've inherited one of my major attributes! Your Dad. Kiss." Nice, eh?

On Rock Movie Velvet Goldmine: I'd studied Iggy Pop and had been watching this video called Kiss My Blood, which is a much later Iggy Pop. It was from 89 or 86 or something like that, when he played Paris. So I'd been studying that, and he does this incredible thing; he's so frenetic and then he stopped and he undid his jeans and he stuck his hand down and was holding his penis, but just staring at the audience for ages it seemed. And then he started thrshing around and as he did his trousers fell down. And in the script it said: "Curt Wild turns round and moons the audience to goad them." Well I'd forgotten to do that in the first couple of takes. So then the director said. "Look, you've got to moon the audience." So I went, "Fine." And then the moment I started, I did that with my penis and looked and then started thrashing around and my trousers fell down like Iggy Pop's. And my bum was revealed to the audience. My penis, of course, is revealed to the cameras, cos they're behind me, but it was just, it was perfect, it couldn't have been better, and it was like I was lost in it I couldn't have done it on purpose. You know what I mean? I couldn't have thought, "Right, I'll do that then and on that link I'll make sure I do that." I don't really work that way anyway, but certainly not then. It was completely of the moment. And fantastic.

On Moulin Rouge:
My God, it was the most incredible experience to be standing on that set. It was like standing in your dreams of what acting could have been like. It was like standing in one of my childhood, childish fantasies about being an actor. It couldn't have been…Scantily clad beauties, music, colour, life and romance. And tragedy and everything.

On Little Voice & Michael Caine:
I was absolutely blown away, and it was a great shame that the only scene we share in Little Voice is when I walk out of the nightclub, I thik looking for her, and he walks in. And that's it: that's my moment with Michael Caine. But, you know, you have to be thankful for even that opportunity, so that was good. But I spent many hours chatting away to him, and like many greats he's very fond of telling stories and I'm very, very fond of listening to them. So it was a really nice time. We had a crazy night up there at some mad mad Scarborough nightclub and I was dancing, thinking I'd got away with not having been spotted, and then the DJ put on that track from Trainspotting where they'd lifted my voice-over, and that started and the DJ went, "Ewan McGregor does his shopping in here!" And I looked up and there was no one standing round me, and I was just being watched dancing! It was hugely embarrassing.