EWAN
RELIABLE GUY NEXT DOOR LIGHTS UP SILVER SCREEN ON CALL
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
Scottish hero Rob Roy knew Crieff to be a place where soles from the highlands and the lowlands clashed to sort out right from wrong.
Three hundred years later a growing boy found the Scottish town had become a bit too conservative for his young heart filled with adventure. Ewan McGregor would leave school, leave home, and leave that place of history for a chance to play theatre in London, all done with his parents’ blessing,
Ewan, the schoolboy, had foregone football on Saturdays for watching classical black and white Hollywood films. Jimmy Stewart, not Scottish footballer King Kenny, would become Ewan’s hero. And the Scott would give himself no choice but to follow his passion.
McGregor became trained in the fine arts of acting and stage craft at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before heading off to the Hollywood casting calls with the sure to be British cult hit, Trainspotting (1996), already having wrapped and in theatres in the United Kingdom.
Sure, of course, the Obi-Wan Kenobi character had also been summoning Ewan from across the Tunisian desert.
Eventually everything would tie together for McGregor, when cast with Liam Neeson who played Qui-Gon Jinn, in Star Wars: Episode I:The Phantom Menace (1999) when in the backstory, Neeson had played Rob Roy in Rob Roy (1995) as in Rob Roy of Crieff.
Star Wars director George Lucas had two more prequels to produce with McGregor as Obi-Wan, but other directors were already casting Lucas’ star Jedi knight in major roles.
Obi-Wan was being mentored by Qui-Gon, and McGregor needed a bit more from Neeson to help him get beyond the cult status he was garnering as the heroin addict, Renton, in Trainspotting.
Ewan was as important to the revival of British cinema as to the Jedi Order. British film had been languishing in obscurity relative to the Hollywood blockbusters and action films monopolizing British cinemas.
And the Hollywood flash would not budge, even with pressure from the British social realism films influenced by French New Wave Cinema.
Brits even tried making purely entertaining films, about nothing in particular, before turning to a gritty rendition of reality with surreal flourishes. Trainspotting blurred the line between art and reality after the cast and crew dabbled in the method approach to acting by hanging out with recovering heroin addicts to gather in the insight that would drive their characters.
The role would define Ewan’s career, playing a desperate, down and out heroin addict who had a glamorous feminine side, but who could also turn bad on a dime.
McGregor found a supporting role in the seminal urban warfare film, Black Hawk Down (2001).
Director Ridley Scott cast Ewan as a military support person with an administrative role binary opposite to his lead as a Jedi Knight. Grimes’ gift for typing keeps him out of live-fire duty until the 100 US Army Ranger unit comes up one short due to an injury.
Ewan still flashes that glamourous smile of a genuinely benevolent fellow willing to get his hands dirty when necessary until the shock and awe of military duty slows him down. Obi-Wan would throw himself into battle as well with the concentration of a highly focussed and well groomed Jedi.
Before one could say ‘Bob’s your uncle’, McGregor was showcasing all his talents in a costar role with Nicole Kidman in the musical, Moulin Rouge! (2001) directed by Baz Luhrmann. Ewan’s sideshow as a Tube Station busker and cover musician in a south London vegetarian restaurant during his student days provided the backstory that enabled his character to dance and deliver the lyrical lines of the script in tandem with the talented leading actor, Kidman.
Avoiding the type casting as a science fiction fantasy samurai, even as the last of three Star Wars prequels rolled out into theatres, McGregor was able to play more delicate roles in thrillers with female costars, such as Michelle Williams in Incendiary (2008) and with Hilary Swank in Amelia (2009).
Instead of going headlong into action films and military movies or even spy thrillers, with his new mega stardom, McGregor found a spot on screen with Winnie the Pooh in Christopher Robin (2018) and as a fashion designer trapped in the image of his own designs in Halston (Series 2021) before becoming an aristocrat confined to a hotel as a ward of the communist state in A Gentleman in Moscow (Series 2024).
All in all a career well played, as a lead character that often mentored a supporting character in a genuine heartfelt way that transcended the genres – or in other ways, gently messaging the role of a supporting character in a way that still made him integral to the on screen performances of the entire cast.
There were other films of course where his supporting character influenced the tone of the film by providing a binary opposite to the leading character, such as in Miles Ahead (2015) in which Don Cheadle plays jazz musician Miles Davis.
Dave Braden wants to interview Miles Davis for a major profile in a music magazine, but Braden finds a washed out, recovering drug addict, and a confused musician too low in self esteem to publish his new music.
The journalist character is the perfect casting for Ewan who must listen and observe the jazz musician more than become the star of his own article. This approach to the story was more often than not relied upon by directors when casting Ewan.
In The Ghost Writer (2010), opposite megastar Pierce Brosnan, Ewan plays a reluctant support person to a former British Prime Minister in hot water over the wartime treatment of prisoners.
A kind of schoolboy curiosity gets the best of The Ghost of the Prime Minister’s memoirs as he asks too many questions and uncovers to many clues about the former Prime Minister that inevitably puts his own life in jeopardy. This same querying helped move along the 16 year old stagehand in Perth to the bigger sets of London theatre and ultimately, to the bigger silver screen.
And in a way, Ewan never really leaves his characters on screen. The circumstances of the script alter the persona, but the actor remains this naturally charismatic with a schoolboy grin from film project to film project.
To play the villain opposite Natalie Portman in Jane’s Got a Gun (2015), Ewan simply turned the ear to ear grin into a tight smirk. and for added effect, wore the rim of his cowboy hat low over his brow. Ewan then lowered his voice a tad to finish the effect, like a gunslinger in a Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant western.
Ewan ‘s screen character was as reliable as Winnie the Pooh. When Christian was to be talented and in love in Moulin Rouge! or when Alexander Rostov was to be a benevolent heart felt aristocrat, Ewan was those things to compel the narrative forward to the desired, penultimate conclusion.
Like the classic cinema icons, Ewan only partially disappears in the character while preserving that bankable public image as a charming charismatic guy next door that got spun in tone and atmosphere from film to film for a star filled career.
Choose Life: Ewan McGregor and the British Film Revival, by Xan Brooks, London, Chameleon Books, 1998.
Ewan McGregor, by Billy Adams, Woodstock, Overlook Press, 1999.