Return of the Mac Evening Standard Magazine August 2001
He's back. Ewan McGregor is about to star in 'Moulin Rouge' with Nicole Kiman, but right now he's busy relaxing with his family in St John's Wood. No more boozing. No more getting out his tackle. Oh, dear says Emma Cook, what went wrong?

Ewan McGregor leans back in an ornate gilt armchair in the Dorchester unable to speak, his face contorted into a tableau of silent joy. 'Mmmmm. Mmmmm,' he manages after a few seconds. 'Oh my God, this tastes good. Doesn't it? Go on, you must try some,' he urges. Oh, all right, Ewan. If you insist. And he does. We both dip into the remains of a gooey chocolate-mousse cake, a takeout from Nobu where he has just had lunch, and then the shared moment is interrupted- Ewan burps. Not loudly but even so. He covers his mouth apologetically and grins. 'Err. Oh dear. I really have just had my lunch, haven't I?" There are no airs and graces with our Ewan. He may e earning zillions playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' Star Wars saga. He may be our Big British Hope in Hollywood, storming Cannes with co-star Nicole Kidman in his new film Moulin Rouge, but fame hasn't changed him one iota. Honest, that cheeky grin implores, I'm still that small-town boy from Crieff who can burp and fart with the best of them.

Even Nicole, apparently. 'Ha. Yes. Nicole-Knickers, as I call her,' he pauses and then laughs boisterously, as if he's just been reminded of a funny joke. 'I would swear, burp and fart in front of her. I'd try and embarrass her and she would pretend to be shocked. I always played up on that. It was a real elder sister-younger brother relationship.' Still, I bet he didn't burp the first time he met Knickers. 'Well. I was nervous at first. Some actors are so famous really that you worry…' he falters, rather sweetly self-conscious. 'Well it's silly really. You…well, you worry how you'll behave with somebody, or something like that. And then you realise that you're all actors together.' I can't imagine Ewan being nervous; he seems robustly confident, especially in his opinions, which can be refreshingly forthright. On London: 'Soho is like the capital of cynicism in the world; there's a lot of cynical "cool" people around talking about doing stuff and not doing anything.' On the film buisness: 'There's a lot of betrayal. People let you down. You start feeling you can't trust anybody and then you think, ""F*** this. No. They're not going to take that [ability to trust] away from me." On Holly wood blockbusters: 'I couldn't put myself through a film like Pearl Harbor. As for Independence Day, it's my favorite hate film,' and he makes a mock-retching sound to prove his point.

So it seems unlikely that Ewan has many moments of soul-searching self-doubt. It must help, of course that he is revoltingly good-looking, though not in a square-jawed action hero sort of way. He looks a lot thinner again with very short hair and has that scruffy, rakish charm that was so appealing in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. That edgy star quality wasn't quite so apparent in Boyle's next film. A Life Less Ordinary, where he played, once again, innocent hero bowled over by a worldly bad girl (Cameron Diaz). Next time around, Boyle famously chose Leonardo DiCaprio over Ewan in his adaptation of Alex Garland's novel, The Beach. 'I was gutted, f***ing gutted,' he admitted at the time. He bristles slightly when I mention Danny Boyle and the blue eyes look steely grey. 'I don't know if I'll work with him again. We'll just have to see.' Has Danny got any new projects? 'Yes. But he hasn't spoken to me about them,' he adds tersely. Now and again slivers of vulnerability open up during his conversation.

He admits that working on Moulin Rouge was, at times, 'a huge emotional upheaval and really much harder work than I'd imagined'. At the heart of Baz Luhrmann's lavish, fin-de-siecle musical is the doomed love affair between Nicole's courtesan dancer and Ewan's idealistic struggling writer. It's an intense on-screen relationship although not one that burns with sexual chemistry; instead there's something terribly innocent about Ewan's performance. Admittedly, it can't be easy trying to be a complex heart-throb while breaking into an Elton John song every five minutes. He's an impressive singer, though, belting out an unlikely medley of love songs to his ashen-faced lover. 'It was an icebreaker to sing and dance with Nicole from the start,' he says. 'We decided to make a pact, to not get embarrassed, and just get on with it. Which we did.' Moulin Rouge is dazzling to watch although the camera work can, at times, be wearyingly frenetic. 'No, Baz, enough. Relax, slow down,' you think, as a cast of thousands disport themselves crazily to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'.

No wonder Ewan found it demanding. 'It was quite painful to do,' he admits. 'And a lot of me came out on screen which made me feel quite vulnerable. I felt I was true to my own character.' In what way? 'Well, it reminded me of coming down to London for the first time. I didn't fall in love with a courtesan, but I may as well have done. I came from a small Scottish town to drama school and a crazed environment. It was a shock for a pure naïve, romantic kind of guy.' He is, he says, still a romantic, idealistic guy at heart. And this is where he has a curiously heartfelt rant- for a minute or more- about his pet hate: cynicism. 'I fight cynicism. It's too easy. It's really boring. It's much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren't as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented.' Oh no. Surely he can't mean journalists? The film was fantastic, Ewan, honest. Anyway, he's actually referring to a more general Soho crowd; the sycophants and hangers-on. 'I'm sick to death of it. It's much better not hanging out in it because it rubs off on you. I've done all that hanging out with people I don't like. I've done all that drinking, sitting in Soho House with people I didn't care to talk to.

Which brings us swiftly to his next passion-spending time with his wife, Eve, a French production designer, and his daughter, Clara. 'I just want to be at home with my family because it's the most important thing in the world. For me, it's become clearer as I've got older [he turned 30 in March]. It's just brilliant. My wee girl's five now and we're having another baby in October so it will all be brand new again.' Ewan met Eve on the set of Kavanagh QC in 1994 when he was 22. They married the following year in the Dordogne. She is, he says, hugely supportive of his work..' Whatever we do, she says, "Well, we'll just make it happen." She's brilliant like that.' Now he's finished Moulin Rouge, he's taking a few months off to spend with his family-they recently moved to a house in St John's Wood. 'I've never had a garden before,' he almost whoops with joy at the idea. 'It's very uncool to be into gardening but I f***ing love it. I've got my wee shed. With stuff. Ha.ha. Shed stuff!" he shakes his head and hoots with laughter. Yes, Nicole, Cameron, Hollywood glitz and superstar fame are all one big yawn.

Clearly, Ewan prefers to relax at his local Homebase, buying Baby Bio and grow bags. 'It was just so frenetic before,' he says. 'It's hard running around, being a dad and a husband. Then, when you realise what's important, it kind of slips into place.' It all sounds as wholesome as brown bread- not like the old days when he used to have a rather more roguish edge. For a start he was always getting his tackle out. There was the nude scene in Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book, a sighting in Velvet Goldmine and the BBC costume drama Scarlet & Black. One magazine profile carried the headline: 'I do have a very large penis'. In the ES photoshoot there is one tantalising shot where he looks as if he's about to prove it. So were you disappointed about keeping your clothes on throughout Moulin Rouge, then? 'Yeah, I was really cut up about that,' he says wearily, giving me a pleading, oh-please-not-another-hackneyed-reference-to-my-penis stare. Oh dear. He's so grown up. And he used to enjoy booze-lots of it. 'I don't go out and get drunk anymore…so much. Nahhh. I just got bored of it.' What went wrong? Churlishly, I can't help thinking that our acting icons should be a little, more, well, decadent, excessive maybe. I bet Gary Oldman doesn't spend his spare time respotting tomatoes. But then he's probably not as happy as Ewan.

Unsurprisingly, Ewan's own background was a very close-knit and stable one. His parents were schoolteachers (They're now retired) and he grew up in Crieff near Perth. At 16 he attended a one-year drama course at the Perth Repertory Theatre and then went to London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His uncle, the actor Denis Lawson was an early influence and he knew form a young age that 'acting was just something I always wanted to do'. It was never a means of escape or a passport to a better life. 'I had a very nice upbringing.

I was fine. No major traumas or anything,' he says cheerfully. Certainly he isn't one of those actors who directs his childhood angst into his work, probably because there isn't much. 'No. I don't have any inner demons as such.' Which is maybe why he can jump so easily from one role to another, without getting typecast as the-moody-git-with-inner-demons. Recently, he completed his second Star Wars film. 'I suppose the lack of depth is…erm…challenging,' he says cautiously. 'But they're quite amazing to see once they come out.'

But he's just as keen to work on smaller projects; later this year he's appearing in a independent Scottish film with new young director David McKenzie. 'I'm just looking for stories. I still have ideals about making films that are diverse and honest,' he says. He is, as he says, an idealist and you can't help admiring his single-minded sense of priority. Just as he stands up to go, he explains: 'I had a friend die recently. I was there while he was lying in bed, surrounded by his loved ones: his wife, daughter and close friends. I thought, this is all you could ever hope for. I remember someone saying, you don't want to die with your colleagues from work standing around your bed. And you don't, you know?' he shakes his head. 'They're cliches but they're true. Being at home is the best…' With that he springs out of his gilt armchair-like a convicted man released- straight back, no doubt to the garden shed in St. John's Wood.