Ewan McGregor is getting killed. Hunched into a tight ball of concenration, he tries desperately to defend himself. With R2-D2 squealing in the background, he tensely squeezes the trigger and fires away at the barrage of incoming TIE fighters. But as his X-wing fighter approaches the Death Star, he is quickly blown to bits by enemy fire. His sudden death signaling the end of the video game, McGregor quickly leaps up from his seat in London's Sega World mall and heads for a nearby escalator. "I was pretty s*** at that," he admits, laughing. "I wanted to try and prove myself. Oh well." Semidisguised by the shaggy hair and full beard he's grown for his current role onstage in Little Malcom and His Struggle against the Eunuchs, McGregor walks unnoticed through the throng of tourists and teenagers in Leicester Square.

Certainly he looks more like and iconoclastic thespian than the star of the most anticipated movie of all time. But that's to be expected when the part of the yhoung Obi-Wan Kenobi (the old Kenobi was played by Alec Guiness) goes to a Scotsman known for bacchanalian roles (Trainspotting, Velvet Goldmine), penis waving (The Pillow Book), and a Hollywood-can-kiss-my-arse attitude (his unsolicited opinion of actors who demand perks: "They are getting paid a lot of money to do a very easy job, so just get on with it."). McGregor, however, dismisses the apparent incongruity. "I've slagged off big-budget blockbusters in my time, but I see my wanting to be in Star Wars as very different kettle of fish," he says. "It's not some s*** like Independence Day or Godzilla. Star Wars is like modern fairy tales and fables. It's a complete entity of its own, and it so has to do with my generation." And perhaps his participation come down to something even simpler: What boy wouldn't want to be a Jedi Knight? "I went to choose my lightsaber, and they brought out this wooden case with padlocks on it," the actor says still sounding awestruck. "My breath was taken away-there were eight or nine different designs of handles. I picked one that had a little mauve button on it. And it has a great, really sexy, violent-looking handle…I saw a clip of me drawing it and switching it on, and it was just and incredible sight. I was like, 'Fawwwwk.'" He pauses. "People would want to touch it. I wouldn't let them. I got very possessive of it."


But during filming, McGregor couldn't help feeling some disappointment. "I thought it would be all high-tech and hydraulic stuff, but I had to actually stand there like [jiggling his body] when someone said, 'Blast!'" he says. As for the acting, McGregor didn't have to stretch himself. "There was a lot of just standing behind Liam [Neeson] like this," he says, remaining still for a beat. "You'll see-I am very often just behind one of his shoulders, standing on a box." McGregor and Neeson also decided that the best way to personify the Jedi mind-set would be simply to frown.

"You get a tension in the eyebrows to represent an…..incredible…amount…of…deep…though," he says, demonstrating the technique. "What you are actually thinking is, What am I going to eat when I get home?" (He prepared for Obi-Wan by watching the early films of Alec Guinness: "It was his voice that was essential to get right. I didn't want to imitate him-it has more to do with the shape of his phrasings and his tone. I still don't know if it is going to work, or if I'll just look like and arsehold.") Sitting in his dressing room at the Comedy Theatre, where Little Malcom is in its thirteenth week, McGregor seems tickled by his current status in the Star Wars saga. He remembers when he was a six-year-old boy in his small hometown of Crieff, wielding a plastic lightsaber ("It was a red torch and a big long tube, which bent-and I have to tell you, so do the real ones") and swooning over Princess Leia ("She was just so beautiful and lovable; she drove me mad for years").

Star Wars was his boyhood passion for a personal reason as well: His uncle, actor and stage director, Dennis Lawson, had a small part in it as the X-wing pilot Wedge Antilles. Now, at 28rs old, McGregor is excited about sharing a similar experience with his three year old daughter Clara.' It's the first film that she will see me in," says McGregor, who acknowledges that he is enjoying the lull before the storm. "It'll be a bit mad when it comes out. I'm thinking about my family and how I am going to protect my little daughter from growing up a monster. But it's stuff you can't worry about too much. You just have to get on with it." McGregor seems fazed, however, when reminded that his image will appear on Kentucky Fried Chicken wrappers worldwide. "I had never even considered that," he says, stopping as if to contemplate the image. "Well, I hope I'm on a ten-piece bucket. Then I'll have really made it."