Ewan Mcgregor - Biography

Biography:

One of the greatest of the Scottish clans is the Clan Gregor. We are all familiar with its most famous son, Rob "Roy" MacGregor, immortalised in legend and played by Liam Neeson on film. And the clan boasts other renowned sons. There was John McGregor, a piper who fought and died alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie at the Alamo: another John, this time MacGregor, who introduced canoeing to Great Britain: there was the folk singer and TV star, Jimmy MacGregor. And, since where there is fame there is usually notoriety, there is Ian MacGregor, the former boss of British Coal, who helped Margaret Thatcher crush the miners in the mid-Eighties.

But surely the name Gregor rose to its highest peak of fame as young Ewan McGregor, Scotland's biggest movie star since Sean Connery, climbed inexorably through the Hollywood ranks. He crooned with and pined for Nicole Kidman in the award-winning Moulin Rouge. He fought alongside Josh Hartnett and Tom Sizemore in Ridley Scott's super-contemporary military action epic Black Hawk Down. And then he was the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy that began with The Phantom Menace, amongst the most successful films of all time. Add to this the controversy surrounding Trainspotting and the many furores caused by Ewan's continual onscreen nudity, and you have a very famous actor, indeed.

Ewan Gordon McGregor was born on the 31st of March, 1971, in Crieff, Perthshire, out in the sticks a few miles north of Edinburgh. His parents - James Charles Stuart McGregor and Carole Diane Lawson - were both teachers, ensuring that Ewan and his older brother Colin (now an RAF pilot) were given a liberal and rounded education. James was furthermore director of the Crieff Highland Games, an event held annually since 1870 and Ewan would come to help him, actually being awarded the title of Chieftain of the Games in 2001. He would remain very close to his parents, Carole still acting as his official spokesperson, as well as dealing with his personal appearances and fan mail.

Ewan was an active child. He enjoyed swimming and sub-aqua diving, and learned the drums, guitar and French Horn. Riding was a big hobby, and he'd eventually get a job at the stables of Crieff Hydro. At school, he did very little acting, but he did perform as soloist for both the choir and orchestra, and recite poetry at school revues. Singing was always in Ewan's repertoire. At parties, he'd entertain his friends and family with impersonations of Elvis Presley, doing Hound Dog or Don't Be Cruel, and he's utilised his musical abilities often in his movies, singing in both Velvet Goldmine and Moulin Rouge and playing brass in Brassed Off.

Though Ewan became a big fan of James Stewart, the prime influence on his career choice was far closer to home. This came in the shape of his uncle, Denis Lawson, himself an actor of some renown. Denis had appeared in the series Rock Follies, would star as Kit Curran in the Kit Curran Radio Show and more recently in Bob Martin. More importantly - and coincidentally, as Ewan's career panned out - he starred alongside Burt Lancaster in Bill Forsyth's Local Hero and as fighter pilot Wedge Antilles in the first three episodes of Star Wars. Seeing Denis in Star Wars had a mighty effect. Ewan thought he was the coolest. "He had long hair," recalls Ewan, "beads and a furry waistcoat. I aspired to be as different as him".

. Ewan had studied from primary school age at Morrison's Academy, where his father was careers advisor and PE teacher (mum taught Special Needs kids in Dundee), and Colin was Head Boy from 1987-88. Colin was a superb student, a golden boy, and his influence on Ewan was profound. When Colin left the school, Ewan, then 16, went off the rails, becoming depressed and getting into trouble. Later, he would recall how, after half a term, when his mother was driving him through a rainy night, she told him that if he was unhappy there he could leave. His life suddenly opened up before him, he could do his own thing and would no longer have to suffer the frustration of being unable to match his brother's achievements. Colin had excelled at all the right things - cricket, rugby and academics - while Ewan lent towards music and the arts (typical waster studies). Also inspired by his uncle and at last embracing his own "difference", he decided to act and, while spending a year studying at the Fife College Of Further And Higher Education at Kirkcaldy, he worked as a stage hand at the Perth Repertory Theatre, learning his craft. Then came the big move. Though he'd take the bus up to Edinburgh at every opportunity, Ewan spent the next three years (1989-92) in London, studying at the Guildhall School Of Music And Drama.

Success was near immediate. Ewan left Guildhall to step straight into a lead role in the TV series Lipstick On Your Collar. Penned by the legendary Dennis Potter, this was both visceral and romantic, the tale of two young Foreign Office clerks in 1956 who do their best to ignore the burgeoning Suez Crisis and indulge their twin passions - girls and rock'n'roll. As Private Mick Hopper, Ewan was superb but the series was not quite the breakthrough he expected. Instead of being whisked to Hollywood, he found himself in the TV show Family Style, then delivering one line, as Alvarez, in Bill Forsyth's Being Human. Despite its interesting premise - one man lives four lives, centuries apart, gradually learning the meaning of courage - and the fact that Robin Williams was starring, the movie was a flop. But it was Ewan's cinematic debut and, for the first time, saw him billed alongside Robert Carlyle.

Ewan has often been drawn to period drama and, having done Lipstick, now played the ambitious Julian Sorrel, alongside Alice Krige and Rachel Weisz in a BBC adaptation of Stendhal's romantic novel, Scarlet & Black. But McGregor was to make his name in far more testing and controversial productions and the first came next. This was Shallow Grave, written by John Hodge and directed by Danny Boyle. Here Ewan played Alex Law, one of three flatmates (the others being played by Kerry Fox and Christopher Eccleston), who advertise for a fourth person to share. They interview various people - one being Ewan's mum Carole! - then choose the excruciatingly wide Keith Allen. Soon finding him dead, and loaded with cash, they . well, let's just say that Shallow Grave, despite a slightly smartarsed script, was the most convincing and shocking bloodbath since Hellraiser.

. Guided both by his education and his youthful enthusiasm for the ultra-contemporary, McGregor continued to switch from classic productions to streetwise exposes. Doggin' Around, starring Elliott Gould, was a cool jazz comedy, written by Alan Plater, who'd penned the famed series Beiderbecke. Then came Blue Juice, with Sean Pertwee and Catherine Zeta-Jones, where Ewan was Dean Raymond, a petty drug-dealer. And drugs stayed on the menu for his next effort, the real breakthrough. In Trainspotting - written by Irvine Welsh and adapted by the Hodge/Boyle team - Ewan starred as Mark "Rent Boy" Renton, an Edinburgh junkie attempting to escape the malign influence both of heroin and his seedy buddies, a sorry bunch including Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy and Robert Carlyle as the crazily violent Begbie. Researching the role, McGregor toyed with the notion of actually experimenting with heroin but, feeling that would be disrespectful to the real-life addicts he'd spoken to (as well as being bloody stupid), he chose instead to undergo a drastic weight-loss.

Trainspotting, of course, was an Oscar-nominated success - Ewan must surely be on his way. In fact, it was ALL going right. Filming an episode of Kavanagh QC (starring John Thaw AKA Inspector Morse), he met and fell for French production designer Eve Mavrakis (pronounced "Ev"), a few years his senior. They quickly married and produced daughter Clara Mathilde. Later, in 2001, came a second girl, named Esther Rose. Ewan would have terrible trouble with tabloids who insisted on printing pictures of the newborn baby.

Yet stardom wasn't really the goal. In 1992, McGregor had performed in Tragic Prelude and The Real Thing on radio and, the next year, appeared in What The Butler Saw at Salisbury, seeking more experience. Now he went for one of cinema's few trulytheatrical experiences, signing up for auteur Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book. Here Vivian Wu played Nagiko, a woman obsessed with body-writing, who embarks upon a sexual odyssey in order to create her own erotic masterpiece. Ewan is Jerome, who gets lucky. And very, very naked.

Like most of Greenaway's films, The Pillow Book was beautiful, fascinating and (sometimes annoyingly) esoteric. But it gained most of its press for its thankfully unashamed focus on Ewan's dangly bits. McGregor got quite a reputation for whipping them out at the drop of a hat. "I'm doing my bit for the women's movement," he joked. "The women have always been naked in movies and now I'm just desperate to take my clothes off as much as possible". The movie also made him a massive star in Japan, so big that appearing in two ads there allowed him to buy a house in London's St John's Wood.

McGregor has clearly attempted to widen his range as fast as possible. After appearing as a poncey dandy in Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma, he took a minor role in Dennis Potter's Karaoke, then did Mark Herman's Brassed Off. This was a charming comedy, co-starring Peter Postlethwaite, concerning the Grimley Brass Band, threatened by pit closures and the consequent decimation of its town. Next came The Serpent's Kiss, again with Postlethwaite, an arty movie not unlike Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract.

By now, Ewan was working constantly. Once he had only a 12 hour break between movies. With the pacey comedy A Life Less Ordinary, he continued his relationship with Boyle and Hodge as they stepped onto the Hollywood ladder. Here he starred with Holly Hunter and Cameron Diaz as a cleaner who gets the sack and subsequently kidnaps his boss's daughter. Then there was Nightwatch, with Patricia Arquette, a creepy thriller where Ewan played a law student moonlighting in a morgue and implicated in some terrible unpleasantness. He played Convenience Store Gunman in an episode of ER, for which he was Emmy-nominated, then did a fine turn as Curt Wild/Iggy Pop, howling and jerking his way through Velvet Goldmine, and returned to Mark Herman, as Jane Horrocks' cute buddy in Little Voice.

In the meantime, McGregor started his own production company, Natural Nylon, with his former co-stars Sean Pertwee and Jonny Lee Miller, and his former flatmate Jude Law. Their first production would be Nora, concerning James Joyce's early relationship with Nora Barnacle, his muse and sexual obsession - McGregor playing the artist as a young man. Before that, Ewan found worldwide fame as the fledgling Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace but NOT, as was widely reported, untold wealth. Ewan claimed that, such is Star Wars' prestige, George Lucas expects everyone to work for glory rather than money. His reported fee of $4 million, said Ewan, was hugely inflated, as was the furore around McGregor's comments that working on Star Wars had been "tedious" and far from intellectually challenging (which, compared to The Pillow Book, it surely was). In no uncertain terms, he was asked by Fox executives to "clarify" his position.

Next, Ewan starred as dangerously incompetent stock dealer Nick Leeson in Rogue Trader: a private eye following Ashley Judd for ten years in Eye Of The Beholder: and headlined in a couple of short films by former Saatchi and Saatchi ad-director Jeff Stark (hey, Alan Parker and Ridley Scott started the same way), one of which, Desserts, won the Berlin Silver Bear. Ewan now returns to big productions with Moulin Rouge. This finally allows him to work with director Baz Luhrmann, having failed to win the part of Mercurio in his earlier, DiCaprio-starring Romeo And Juliet. McGregor had also suffered another bit of DiCaprio-related bother, having lost the lead in The Beach to the Titanic star. This miffed McGregor mightily, as the movie was made by his friends Boyle and Hodge, who he believed had given in to The Man.

. Moulin Rouge was a huge success, earning Ewan a Golden Globe nomination. He might also have secured an Oscar nomination for his duet with Kidman but their song, Come What May, was ineligible, having been originally written for Romeo And Juliet. So Ewan moved on to Black Hawk Down, which told the (true) story of a US Special Forces raid in Somalia's capital Mogadishu in 1993. Attempting to put an end to bloody civil war by apprehending hostile war lords, the elite forces found a mission that was supposed to last 39 minutes went completely out of control when two of their Black Hawk choppers were shot down. As they could "leave no man behind", they had to fight it out on the ground - 18 were killed and 73 wounded.

For this role, Ewan trained for a week with real-life Rangers down in Georgia. He also had the name of his character changed. His role was based on the very real exploits of one John Stebbins, who had been awarded a Silver Star for bravery at Mogadishu. Unfortunately, in 2000, Stebbins was court-martialled for abusing a child under the age of 12, and was sentenced to 30 years at Leavenworth military prison in Kansas. To avoid embarrassment and controversy, officials at the Pentagon "asked" the writer of Black Hawk Down to change the name. Hence McGregor as John Grimes.

Following this, Ewan was to move on to a murder-flick in Jamaica, having signed to make Nautica with Heath Ledger. Sadly, the proposed director, Ted Demme, died of a heart attack while playing basketball (he was only 38), and the project was shelved. Still there was Young Adam, a pet project, based on the Camus-inspired novel by Scottish maverick Alexander Trocchi. This involved more murder, with Ewan playing an amoral drifter who, while working on a barge, enjoys an aggressive affair with his boss's wife, Tilda Swinton, while seeking carnal knowledge of anyone else he can get his hands on (sex adding colour to his dull life). He's selfish, brooding and (bravely) unsympathetic, a man in steep moral decline. In flashback we witness his past relationship with Emily Mortimer. It was strange and partly sadistic - but it still might have saved him.

Once more, by deliberately making his sex scenes with Mortimer as graphic as possible, McGregor whipped the tabloids into a frenzy (actually, much as he did onscreen to Mortimer).

. Such was McGregor's very public insistence on keeping his numerous sex scenes as "real" as possible (as opposed to the soft porn Hollywood variety) that he found himself battered with sexual questions in every interview. Interestingly, given the intimacy of the scenes he's played, and the extraordinary sexiness of the women he's played them with, when asked if he ever became "aroused" during fake sex he said it happened very seldom, and that he'd just take a little time to compose himself. Indeed, the only time he'd really got over-excited was while filming Scarlet And Black with Alice Krige - which is, of course, wholly understandable.

After Young Adam, McGregor would appear twice more in 2003. First he'd narrate the MotoGP documentary Faster, then would come Down With Love, a rom-com in the style of Doris Day and Rock Hudson, where Ewan played a cynical journalist in the early 1960s out to seduce feminist author Renee Zellweger and prove she's an old-fashioned girl at heart. Next would come Tim Burton's Big Fish, based on the novel by Daniel Wallace. Here Billy Crudup was a son trying to get to the bottom of the tall tales told by his dying father, a small-scale Baron Munchausen played by Albert Finney. Ewan would play the young Finney, engaging in a series of strange adventures that would take Burton back to the anarchic wonder of Edward Scissorhands and even Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

All the while, of course, there was Star Wars. In Attack Of The Clones, Ewan was once more Obi-Wan, but 10 years after the events of The Phantom Menace. Now he'd become a Jedi teacher and, along with his pupil, Anakin Skywalker, was ordered to save the beleaguered Queen Amidala from assassination. Part 3 would later see his relationship with Skywalker turn nasty, bringing about the birth of Darth Vader. His relationship with Star Wars itself was not easy, either, Ewan admitting that the pressures of sudden fame and the publicity tread-mill had led him towards alcoholism.

All the while, of course, there was Star Wars. In Attack Of The Clones, Ewan was once more Obi-Wan, but 10 years after the events of The Phantom Menace. Now he'd become a Jedi teacher and, along with his pupil, Anakin Skywalker, was ordered to save the beleaguered Queen Amidala from assassination. Part 3, the Revenge Of The Sith, would later see his relationship with Skywalker turn nasty, bringing about the birth of Darth Vader. His relationship with Star Wars itself was not easy, either, Ewan admitting that the pressures of sudden fame and the publicity tread-mill had led him towards alcoholism. One other aspect of his career that kept him helpfully earthbound was a working relationship with his uncle and idol Denis Lawson.

2002 had seen them deliver Solid Geometry, a TV drama where Ewan, receiving 41 volumes of his grandfather's diaries, becomes obsessed with exploring other dimensions and decides to experiment by sending his wife into one. Earlier, in 1998, Ewan had won many plaudits when he was directed by Lawson in Little Malachi And His Struggle Against the Eunuchs at Hampstead (the role that broke John Hurt back in the Sixties).

2005 would be an extremely busy year for McGregor releases. Having the year before motorbiked, with his friend Charlie Boorman, from London to New York via Russia and Alaska, his efforts were turned into a docu-series, book and DVD in aid of the Children's Hospice Association of Scotland. Onscreen, aside from the final blast of Star Wars, he also lent his voice to two big budget cartoons. First was Robots, where he played a young robot inventor hoping to work for his inspiration in Robot City, but winding up struggling against sinister new management. It was fun stuff, though McGregor (like everyone else) was wholly overshadowed by Robin Williams' trademark improvisedshowboating. Less successful was Valiant, where he played a brave but courageous carrier pigeon desperate to do his bit for King and Country in the run-up to the D-Day landings.

Where Revenge Of The Sith was the predicted enormo-hit, McGregor's other blockbuster of 2005 was a financial catastrophe. Michael Bay's The Island was certainly based on an interesting premise. As in Logan's Run, people of the future are kept locked away from a supposedly deadly outside world, with the occasional lottery winner being permitted to live on the titular island, the only pollution-free zone left on Earth. McGregor would play a man whose curiosity inevitably leads him to question the status quo and, along with fellow escapee Scarlet Johansson, he'd embark on an elongated chase sequence featuring all the pyrotechnics at Bay's disposal (quite a lot). So, why was it a flop? The producers claimed the stars weren't big/attractive/charismatic enough to carry such a monster, others blamed the marketing.

Amazingly, Valiant and The Island weren't McGregor's only box-office failures of 2005. Stay also took a battering. Here McGregor played a psychiatrist who took over the counselling of Ryan Gosling, a suicidal student who says he's going to top himself at midnight the next Saturday. McGregor must stop this, as well as dealing with a home-life with Naomi Watts, a former patient and another potential suicide candidate. Beautifully shot, the film would deliberately drift into surreal, dreamlike David Lynch territory as, delving into Gosling's madness, McGregor began to question his own sanity. Unfortunately, despite several top-line reviews praising the film's fascination, it bombed badly. Luckily for McGregor he was enjoying success elsewhere, playing Sky Masterson alongside Jane Krakowski in a sell-out revival of Guys And Dolls at London's Piccadilly Theatre.

Having been pipped by Daniel Craig in the race to follow Piers Brosnan as James Bond, 2006 would see McGregor back on typically controversial ground with Scenes Of A Sexual Nature, a movie following the movements of seven separate couples one afternoon on Hampstead Heath. Each tale would have a comic element as it explored people's fantasies and realities, with Ewan playing one half of a gay couple discussing whether to have kids and, if they did, which of them would give up work. Very, very different would be Stormbreaker, the first in a hoped-for franchise featuring Anthony Horowitz's teen-agent hero Alex Rider. McGregor would appear in cameo as Rider's uncle and guardian who, without the boy knowing, trains him in the arts of all-action spydom.

. After this would come a reunion with Renee Zellweger in Miss Potter. Produced by Zellweger herself, this would tell the tale of Beatrix Potter as she struggled against a domineering mother and a stuffy Victorian chauvinism to achieve personal and artistic freedom. Zellweger would naturally take the sassy lead, with McGregor playing the young publisher who launches her books and with whom she falls in love. Emily Watson would add extra weight as McGregor's sister, with the movie also featuring animated sequences, bringing Potter's famous animal stories to life.

We can expect to see Ewan McGregor, who in 2001 received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ulster, continue to deliver work of true interest, though after The Island and the end of the Star Wars series, it's possible he may never again headline a Hollywood action blockbuster. He will surely continue to seek out satisfying projects far from Hollywood, and work with his uncle. There will probably be more nature and travel programmes, too. McGregor has made a show about polar bears, diving under the Arctic ice, and another (Trips Money Can't Buy) which involved spending ten days in the jungles of Honduras, surviving on insects and, well, anything they could find that wasn't an insect. The motorbikes will make a reappearance, for sure, and the cheques for charity will keep rolling in. He's like that. A nice guy.

Dominic Wills